Quotations: Facts

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
Henry Adams

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
John Adams

Facts are stupid until brought into connection with some general law.
Louis Agassiz

A shilling life will give you all the facts.
W H Auden

Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong about his facts.
Bernard Baruch

Facts can't be recounted; much less twice over, and far less still by different persons. I've already drummed that thoroughly into your head.
Augusto Roa Bastos

Facts quite often, I fear to confess, like lawyers, put me to sleep at noon. Not theories, however. Theories are invigorating and tonic. Give me an ounce of fact and I will produce you a ton of theory by tea this afternoon. That is, after all, my job.
Ray Bradbury

Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.
Thomas Carlyle

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
G K Chesterton

Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if only we face the facts, as they say, with both eyes open.
Nicolas Copernicus

Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.
Clarence Day

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
Arthur Conan Doyle

Alcohol is necessary for a man so that he can have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed by the facts.
Finley Peter Dunne

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Albert Einstein

In the spider-web of facts, many a truth is strangled.
Paul Eldridge

America's technology has turned inward upon itself; its corporate form makes a servant of profit, not the servant of human needs.
Alice Embree

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
Martin H Fischer

Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature.
Martin Fischer

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get 'em, get 'em right, or they will get you wrong.
Thomas Fuller

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.
Galileo

Facts from paper are not the same as facts from people. The reliability of the people giving you the facts is as important as the facts themselves.
Harold Geneen

The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.
Arnold Glasow

A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.
Thomas H Huxley

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley

Great abilites are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree...
Samuel Johnson

An ounce of emotion is equal to a ton of facts.
John Junor

No matter what you believe, it doesn't change the facts.
Al Kersha

A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.
Jean de LaBruyere

Every Age has its own peculiar faith. . . . Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts.
Giuseppe Mazzini

Attitudes are more important than facts.
Karl A Menninger

An autobiography can distort, facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies. It reveals the writer totally.
V S Naipaul

Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.
Jawaharlal Nehru

There are no facts, only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Do you want to live in a world where a man Iies about calories?
Gail Parent

Facts are the air of the scientists. Without them you never can fly.
Ivan Pavlov

A lady, that is an enlightened, cultivated, liberal lady,... could espouse any cause: wayward girls, social diseases, unmarried mothers, and/or birth control with impunity. But never... should she acknowledge her own experience with the Facts of Life.
Virgilia Peterson

Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
Colin Powell

A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another.
Gilbert Ryle

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts.
Margaret Sanger

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
George Santayana

Fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics, never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of a skirt.
Elsa Schiaparelli

Facts are stubborn things.
Tobias Smollett

We must have strong minds, ready to accept facts as they are.
Harry S Truman

Get you facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.
Mark Twain

Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments.
Evelyn Waugh

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
E B White

Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
Oscar Wilde

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
Oscar Wilde

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