quotations about facts
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
WASHINGTON IRVING
The Sketch Book
When facts speak, the wise man listens.
STEPHEN KING
The Wind through the Keyhole
Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Time Must Have a Stop
Facts may speak for themselves.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Major-General Greene, Jan. 22, 1780
Facts are like rocks: they don't talk; they must be interpreted by one's assumptions.
JOHN D. MORRIS
The Young Earth
The birth of a new fact is always a wonderful thing to experience. It's dualistically called a "discovery" because of the presumption that it has an existence independent of anyone's awareness of it. When it comes along, it always has, at first, a low value. Then, depending on the value-looseness of the observer and the potential quality of the fact, its value increases, either slowly or rapidly, or the value wanes and the fact disappears.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
Midnight's Children
When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covere a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.
DEAN KOONTZ
The Good Guy
Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.
UMBERTO ECO
Foucault's Pendulum
Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!
HOMER SIMPSON
The Simpsons
The educated don't get that way by memorizing facts; they get that way by respecting them.
TOM HEEHLER
"The Well-Spoken Thesaurus"
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
JOHN ADAMS
Argument in Defense of the British Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, Dec. 4, 1770
Facts are carpet-tacks under the pneumatic tires of theory.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The facts are always less than what really happened.
NADINE GORDIMER
Conversations with Nadine Gordimer
But facts are chiels that winna ding, and downa be disputed.
ROBERT BURNS
"A Dream"
We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe when compared with a stubborn theory.
SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS
The Gentle Reader
A wise and honest man looks to broad facts, and forms his judgment from them; a rogue endeavours to lead your attention off the true scent, away to details, that he may puzzle and confound you with minutiae always difficult to detect, and sometimes impossible to deny, but which, nevertheless, are nothing more than stakes laid in your path to trip you up, that he may plunder you at his convenience. If, therefore, the broad facts appear suspicious, doubt, but if details be brought to aid them, be sure, that you are in the high road to be deceived.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims
The facts are really not at all like fish on a fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use--these two factors, of course, being determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch.
E. H. CARR
What is History?
A man never gets anywhere if facts and his ledgers don't square.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
Facts don't always smack down fear, because fear isn't always about facts--or logic, or reason, or reality.
JEFFREY WEBER
From Idea to Exit