Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
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.
It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion
Men on their side must force themselves for a while to lay their notions by and begin to familiarize themselves with facts.
If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right.
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. What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what's behind them.
The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.
Remember son, many a good story has been ruined by over verification.
A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.
People can refute your facts, but never your feelings.
Facts in books, statistics in encyclopedias, the ability to use them in men's heads.
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a man by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts?
I grow daily to honor facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing -- a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.
Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.
I deal with the obvious. I present, reiterate and glorify the obvious -- because the obvious is what people need to be told.
The best current evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers groceries causes change in our nutrition.
Now, what I want is, facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!
As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact.
Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.
Facts are the most important thing in business. Study facts and do more than is expected of you.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.
Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.
Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.
Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.
Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.
A concept is stronger than a fact.
The facts: nothing matters but the facts: worship of the facts leads to everything, to happiness first of all and then to wealth.
General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.
Facts are counterrevolutionary.
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called facts. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no facts at this table.
Facts are ventriloquists 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.
Facts don't cease to exist because they are ignored.
Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.
I have always found that if I move with seventy-five percent or more of the facts that I usually never regret it. It's the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.
The fatal futility of Fact.
Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
One precedent creates another and they soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was a fact, today is doctrine.
— Junius
The ultimate umpire of all things in life is -- fact.
One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.
Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called scientific mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.
A fact is like a sack -- it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.
The sky is not less blue because the blind man does not see it.
Facts have a cruel way of substituting themselves for fancies. There is nothing more remorseless, just as there is nothing more helpful, than truth.
The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true.
I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you'd say, Where? What? and turn away.
Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
She always says, my lord, that facts are like cows. If you look them in the face hard enough they generally run away.
Comment is free but facts are sacred.
It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.
We should keep so close to facts that we never have to remember the second time what we said the first time.
Oh, don't tell me of facts -- I never believe facts: you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.
My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologies. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
I often wish that I could rid the world of the tyranny of facts. What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.
It is easier to believe a lie that one has heard a thousand times than to believe a fact that no one has heard before.
Never forget the facts are important but it's the opinion of the facts that causes comment.
Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When they judged the earth flat, it was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was. We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows.
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.