Charles Fort Quotes & Sayings

It is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that which won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't stay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they came. — Charles Fort

One can't learn much and
also be comfortable
One can't learn much and
let anybody else be comfortable — Charles Fort

Call it swoon, or call it hypnosis--but that it is never absolute, and that all of us sometimes have awareness of our condition, and moments of wondering what it's all about and why we do and think the things that sometimes we wake up and find ourselves doing and thinking. Upon — Charles Fort

It seems to me that, very strikingly here, is borne out the general acceptance that ours is only an intermediate existence, in which there is nothing fundamental, or nothing final to take as a positive standard to judge by. Peasants believed in meteorites. Scientists excluded meteorites. Peasants believe in "thunderstones." Scientists exclude "thunderstones." It is useless to argue that peasants are out in the fields, and that scientists are shut up in laboratories and lecture rooms. We cannot take for a real base that, as to phenomena with which they are more familiar, peasants are more likely to be right than are scientists: a host of biologic and meteorologic fallacies of peasants rises against us. — Charles Fort

I had used all except peach labels. I pasted the peach labels on peach cans, and then came to apricots. Well, aren't apricots peaches? And there are plums that are virtually apricots. I went on, either mischievously, or scientifically, pasting the peach labels on cans of plums, cherries, string beans, and succotash. I can't quite define my motive, because to this day it has not been decided whether I am a humourist or a scientist. I think that it was mischief, but, as we go along, there will come a more respectful recognition that also it was scientific procedure. — Charles Fort

All would be well. All would be heavenly
If the damned would only stay damned. — Charles Fort

I think we're all bugs and mice, and are only different expressions of an all-inclusive cheese. — Charles Fort

Is life worth living? Like everybody else, I have many times asked that question, usually deciding negatively, because I am most likely to ask myself whether life is worth living, at times when I am convinced it isn't. One day, in one of my frequent, and probably incurable, scientific moments, it occurred to me to find out. For a month, at the end of each day, I set down a plus sign, or a minus sign, indicating that, in my opinion, life had, or had not, been worth living, that day. At the end of the month, I totted up, and I can't say that I was altogether pleased to learn that the pluses had won the game. It is not dignified to be optimistic. — Charles Fort

The fittest survive. What is meant by the fittest? Not the strongest; not the cleverest - weakness and stupidity everywhere survive. There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive. 'Fitness,' then, is only another name for 'survival.' Darwinism: That survivors survive. — Charles Fort

Almost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly. — Charles Fort

I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written. — Charles Fort

If the basic fallacies, or the absence of base, in every specialization of thought can be seen by the units of its opposition, why then we see that all supposed foundations in our whole existence are myths, and that all discussion and supposed progress are the conflicts of phantoms and the overthrow of old delusions by new delusions. Nevertheless — Charles Fort

I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while. — Charles Fort

We shall pick up an existence by its frogs. — Charles Fort

If there is a true universal mind, must it be sane? — Charles Fort

Do you want power over something? Be more nearly real than it. — Charles Fort

The aggregate appearance is of dignity and dissoluteness. The aggregate voice is a defiant prayer. But the spirit of the whole is processional. The power, that has said to all these things that they are damned, is dogmatic science. But they'll march! The little harlots will caper and the freaks will distract the attention and the clowns will break the rhythm of the whole with their buffooneries. But the solidity of the procession as a whole, the solidity of things which pass and pass and pass, and keep on and keep on coming, the irresistibleness of things that neither threaten, nor jeer, nor defy, but arrange themselves in mass formations that pass and pass and keep on passing. So, by the damned, I mean the excluded. — Charles Fort

It's like looking for a needle that no one ever lost in a haystack that never was - — Charles Fort

[Wise men] have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere. — Charles Fort

In measuring a circle, one begins anywhere. — Charles Fort

Collective hallucination is another of the dismissal-labels by which conventionalists shirk thinking. Here is another illustration of the lack of standards, in phenomenal existence, by which to judge anything. One man's story, if not to the liking of conventionalists, is not accepted, because it is not supported; and then testimony by more than one is not accepted, if undesirable, because that is collective hallucination. In this kind of jurisprudence, there is no hope for any kind of testimony against the beliefs in which conventional scientists agree. Among their amusing disregards is that of overlooking that, quite as truly may their own agreements be collective delusions. — Charles Fort

The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property. — Charles Fort

My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences? — Charles Fort

When, upon the closed system of normal preoccupations, a story of a sea serpent appears, it is inhospitably treated. To us of the wider cordialities, it has recommendations for kinder reception. I think that we shall be noted in recognitions of good works for our bizarre charities. — Charles Fort

But some of us have been educated by surprises out of much that we were 'absolutely sure' of ... — Charles Fort

The history of science is a record of the transformations of contempts amd amusements. — Charles Fort

I have taken the stand that nobody can be always wrong, but it does seem to me that I have approximated so highly that I am nothing short of a negative genius. — Charles Fort

A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded. — Charles Fort

Char me the trunk of a redwood tree. Give me pages of white chalk cliffs to write upon. Magnify me thousands of times, and replace my trifling immodesties with a titanic megalomania - then might I write largely enough for our subjects. — Charles Fort

I sent letters of enquiry to all persons whose names were given, and received not one reply. There are several ways of explaining. One is that it is probable that persons who have experiences such as those told of in this book, receive so many "crank letters" that they answer none. Dear me - once upon a time, I enjoyed a sense of amusement and superiority toward "cranks". And now here am I, a "crank", myself. Like most writers, I have the moralist somewhere in my composition, and here I warn - take care, oh, reader, with whom you are amused, unless you enjoy laughing at yourself. — Charles Fort

Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts. — Charles Fort

Against all the opposition in the world, I make this statement - that once I knew a magician. I was a witness of a performance that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic. — Charles Fort

Peasants have believed in dowsing, and scientists used to believe that dowsing was only a belief of peasants. Now there are so many scientists who believe in dowsing that the suspicion comes to me that it may only be a myth after all. — Charles Fort

The theologians have recognized that the ideal is the imitation of God. If we be a part of such an organic thing, this thing is God to us, as I am God to the cells that compose me. — Charles Fort

But Truth is that besides which there is nothing: nothing to modify it, nothing to question it, nothing to form an exception: the all-inclusive, the complete - By Truth, I mean the Universal. — Charles Fort

We cannot define. Nothing has ever been finally figured out, because there is nothing final to figure out — Charles Fort

When we come upon assurances that a mystery has been solved, we go on investigating. — Charles Fort

what we call existence is a womb of infinitude, and is itself only incubatory - that eventually all attempts are broken down by the falsely excluded. — Charles Fort

I am a collector of notes upon subjects that have diversity - such as deviations from concentricity in the lunar crater Copernicus, and a sudden appearance of purple Englishmen - stationary meteor-radiants, and a reported growth of hair on the bald head of a mummy - and 'Did the girl swallow the octopus? — Charles Fort

If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time. — Charles Fort

People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels. — Charles Fort

Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores. Other times I have joys, when unexpectedly coming upon an outrageous story that may not be altogether a lie, or upon a macabre little thing that may make some reviewer of my more or less good works mad. But always there is present a feeling of unexplained relations of events that I note, and it is this far-away, haunting, or often taunting, awareness, or suspicion, that keeps me piling on. — Charles Fort

All biologic phenomena act to adjust: there are no biologic actions other than adjustments. Adjustment is another name for Equilibrium. Equilibrium is the Universal, or that which has nothing external to derange it. — Charles Fort

It is not possible to define. Nothing has ever been finally found out. Because there is nothing final to find out. — Charles Fort

There is not a physicist in the world who can perceive when a parlor magician palms off playing-cards. — Charles Fort

The ideal state is meekness, or humility, or the semi-invalid state of the old. Year after year I am becoming nobler and nobler. If I can live to be decrepit enough, I shall be a saint. — Charles Fort