Facts Are Facts Quotes & Sayings

Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs. — Martin Gardner

The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. — John Rawls

By extrapolating a little from Freud, it becomes possible to think of nationalism as a kind of narcissism. A nationalist takes the neutral facts about a people - their language, habitat, culture, tradition and history- and turns these facts into a narrative, whose purpose is to illuminate the self-consciousness of a group, to enable them to think of themselves as a nation with a claim to self-determination. A nationalist, in other words, takes "minor differences"- indifferent in themselves- and transforms them into major differences. For this purpose, traditions are invented, a glorious past is gilded and refurbished for public consumption, and a people who might not have thought of themselves as a people at all suddenly begin to dream of themselves as a nation. — Michael Ignatieff

The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Facts and values are entangled in science. It's not because scientists are biased, not because they are partial or influenced by other kinds of interests, but because of a commitment to reason, consistency, coherence, plausibility and replicability. These are value commitments. — Alva Noe

Character is the starting point from which we go on. When I say a man has character, I mean that when you go to that man and say, 'What are the facts in this case?' he will tell you the truth, justly, truly, and wisely as he knows, with the minimum of exhibitionism and the maximum of devotion to the common cause. — Douglas Southall Freeman

Facts and Observations #1 If people think you're dishonored, it's no different from actually having been dishonored, except you still don't know anything. #2 When you've been ruined, there are only two options: death or marriage. #3 Since I am gravely healthy, the first option isn't likely. #4 On the other hand, ritual self-sacrifice in Iceland cannot be ruled out. #5 Lady Berwick advises marriage and says Lord St. Vincent is "bred to the bill." Since she once made the same remark about a stud horse she and Lord Berwick bought for their stable, I have to wonder if she's looked in his mouth. #6 Lord St. Vincent reportedly has a mistress. #7 The word "mistress" sounds like a cross between mistake and mattress. "We've — Lisa Kleypas

slavery is rarely taught in schools, and our understanding of its scope is barely rudimentary. The mainstream of American thought still does not contain a shared body of information on slavery even though the facts about American enslavement are widely available. Several years after that first spring, when I began to speak publicly about the book that had come forward from a newspaper project on slavery in the North (Complicity), I was asked the same question over and over, by audiences around the country: "Why don't we know about this? — Anne Farrow

People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is.
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that's out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices.
When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.
Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty! — Vera Nazarian

Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths. — Yann Martel

Here again, it occurred to me, was the unique problem that faces my generation, the generation of those who had been, say, seven or eight years old during the mid-1960s, the generation of the grandchildren of those who'd been adults when it all happened; a problem that will face no other generation in history. We are just close enough to those who were there that we feel an obligation to the facts as we know them; but we are also just far enough away, at this point, to worry about our own role in the transmission of those facts, now that the people to whom those facts happened have mostly slipped away. — Daniel Mendelsohn

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death. — E. M. Forster

Recorded history's version does not coincide with the truth, but these are the facts, because they were passed down by word of mouth through the years, and every Maycombian knows them. — Harper Lee

When we approach theology as facts to look at, it is easy to allow certain theological debates to replace Scripture as our primary theological subject matter. These debates - such as the categorization of God's attributes, the nature of predestination, the age of the earth, and the continuation of certain spiritual gifts - are not unimportant issues, and sometimes the church must return to them for extended theological reflection. However, the church's mission is derailed when theology becomes little more than a discipline helping people know what to believe about these particular issues. These debates are necessary to the task of theology, but they are not primary. The primary role of theology is to cultivate in us a love for and knowledge of — Daniel L. Akin

The mind is confused? Is it not so? Take time, mon ami. You are agitated; you are excited - it is but natural. Presently, when we are calmer, we will arrange the facts, neatly, each in his proper place. We will examine - and reject. Those of importance we will put on one side; those of no importance, pouf! blow them away! — Agatha Christie

Yes, I have been forced to whittle down the facts, and to be a liar, but it is not one universe, there are millions, almost as many as the number of human eyes and brains in existence, that awake every morning. — Marcel Proust

Nouns now turn overnight into verbs. We target goals and we access facts. Train conductors announce that the train won't platform. A sign on an airport door tells me that the door is alarmed. Companies are downsizing. It's part of an ongoing effort to grow the business. "Ongoing" is a jargon word whose main use is to raise morale. We face our daily job with more zest if the boss tells us it's an ongoing project; we give more willingly to institutions if they have targeted our funds for ongoing needs. Otherwise we might fall prey to disincentivization. — William Zinsser

The British soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact - they have all enlisted for drink. — Duke Of Wellington

The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true. — Ernest Renan

"The [London] Times" has published no rumours; it's only reported facts, namely that other, less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours. — Tom Stoppard

I never think people are cheeering for us. In fact, i don't really hear them at all. — Jared Leto

Facts are of not much use, considered as facts. They bewilder by their number and their apparent incoherency. Let them be digested into theory, however, and brought into mutual harmony, and it is another matter. — Oliver Heaviside

I'm a fake fact factory. The things I make are the things I make up. Also, as a side business, I make love. Actually, I just made that up. — Dora J. Arod

It doesn't seem to matter how often vaccines are proved safe or supplements are shown to offer nothing of value. When people don't like facts, they ignore them. — Michael Specter

This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to articulate: that there are no moral facts. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Trivial, - there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation, - are useful. — Victor Hugo

You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza.' She sighed, as if that was an accident. As if she hadn't spent an hour preening herself before the mirror. 'Facts are facts. Stating them isn't a gift. You only prove you're not blind.' She yawned, stretched in her saddle, made him wait a moment longer. 'But I'll hear more. — Joe Abercrombie

Getting a handle on why wolves do what they do has never been an easy proposition. Not only are there tremendous differences in both individual and pack personalities, but each displays a surprising range of behaviors depending on what's going on around them at any given time. No sooner will a young researcher thing, 'That's it, I've finally got a handle on how wolves respond in a particular situation,' than they'll do something to prove him at least partially wrong. Those of us who've been in this business for very long have come to accept a professional life full of wrong turns and surprises. Clearly, this is an animal less likely to offer scientists irrefutable facts than to lure us on a long and crooked journey of constant learning. — Douglas W. Smith

The worries that are the burden of which the privileged person makes an excuse in dealing with the oppressed person are in fact the worries about preserving his privileged condition. — Franz Kafka

Never act upon wishful thinking. Act without checking the facts, and chances are that you will be swept away along with the mob. — Jim Rogers

These numbers are staggering, in fact incomprehensible. By all accounts, we are dealing with the greatest health crisis in human history. — Nelson Mandela

If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing. — David Douglass

When your goal is to build people up, to make them feel better, to share in their joy, you too reap the rewards of their positive feelings. The next time you have the chance to correct someone, even if their facts are a little off, resist the temptation. Instead, ask yourself, "What do I really want out of this interaction?" Chances are, what you want is a peaceful interaction where all parties leave feeling good. Each time you resist 'being right,' and instead choose kindness, you'll notice a peaceful feeling within. — Richard Carlson

But you perceive, my boy, that it is not so, and that facts, as usual, are very stubborn things, overruling all theories. — Jules Verne

All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, trebleor centuple use and meaning. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The facts are on our side. — Karen Hughes

You're under pressure when you produce facts. You're working with facts in journalism, but you're under all kinds of formal constraints; there are expectations. — Denis Johnson

In fact, if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that produced life like ours are immense. — Stephen Hawking

Once the facts are clear the decisions jump out at you. — Peter Drucker

Science ask facts and religion ask faith, humans are confused between life and death. — Santosh Kalwar

But when our elected officials and our political campaign become entirely untethered to reason and facts and analysis, when it doesn't matter what's true and what's not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations. It threatens the values of respect and tolerance that we teach our children and that are the source of America's strength. It frays the habits of the heart that underpin any civilized society -- because how we operate is not just based on laws, it's based on habits and customs and restraint and respect. — President Barack Obama

It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed.
Very odd, isn't it. — Josephine Tey

Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. — Charles Dickens

Successful people make decisions quickly (as soon as all the facts are available) and change them very slowly (if ever). Unsuccessful people make decisions very slowly, and change them often and quickly. — Napoleon Hill

If all we ever sang about was how happy we are, we would be lying to ourselves. People try to escape their problems by getting drunk, partying and dancing them away. What really heals me is to sit down and think, face the facts, then you can get over it and be happy — Amy Lee

Persons living in this modern world who do not know the basic facts that determine their very existence, functioning, and surroundings, are living in a dream world. Such persons are, in a very real sense, not sane. — Gerald Holton

Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character. — Viola Davis

Musicians are affected by the audience just as much as audiences are affected by the musicians. The only problem is that often times musicians won't allow themselves to admit to that fact. — Hamid Drake

A system in which legal police shootings of unarmed civilians are a common occurrence is a system that has some serious flaws. In this case, the drawback is a straightforward consequence of America's approach to firearms. A well-armed citizenry required an even-better-armed constabulary. Widespread gun ownership creates a systematic climate of fear on the part of the police. The result is a quantity of police shootings that, regardless of the facts of any particular case, is just staggeringly high. Young black men, in particular, are paying the price for America's gun culture. — Matthew Yglesias

Conceptual art' is an oxymoron. Concepts are articulations of fact or supposition, not attributes of quality. — Walter Darby Bannard

At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse -
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident. — William Carlos Williams

Scientific facts are often described in textbooks as if they just sort of exist, like nickels someone picked up on the street. But science at the cutting edge, conducted by sharp minds probing deep into nature, is not about self-evident facts. It is about mystery and not knowing. It is about taking huge risks. — Richard Preston

The Bahraini people are eager to obtain facts to enable them to shape a comprehensive national opinion without division among its people. We confirm to all journalists and media personnel in the kingdom of Bahrain that their freedom is preserved and their rights are safeguarded. — Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa

A materialist feminist approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a 'natural group' ... What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a 'natural group.' A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one ... — Monique Wittig

The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects of the science, the ideas which represent these facts, and the words by which these ideas are expressed. Like three impressions of the same seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact. — Antoine Lavoisier

Intuition, if you are fashion designer is really the key to everything. I just really have a feeling it's the right moment in time to create a new business model. Obviously I have facts and figures that could back that up. It isn't a gamble; it's a calculated risk. — Monita Rajpal

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts. — Paul De Man

Now, tell me how you're going to teach the history of Jefferson, and cut out all those quotes and cut out all these facts, and cut out the key line of the Declaration of Independence: We are endowed by our Creator. I mean you have to have a conscious deliberate censorship of America, which is what the left and the courts and the classrooms has had for 40 years. — Newt Gingrich

Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts. — Jerome Frank

So, your best defense is knowledge. It really is power, as they say ... The more you know, the more easily you will develop your own philosophies about child rearing. When you have your facts straight, and when you have a parenting plan, you will be able to respond with confidence to those who are well-meaning but offering contrary or incorrect advice. — Elizabeth Pantley

But more impressive than the facts and figures as to height, width, age, etc., are the entrancing beauty and tranquility that pervade the forest, the feelings of peace, awe and reverence that it inspires. — George MacDonald

The facts about our past are powerless against the blood of Jesus and the Truth of His Word. — Joyce Meyer

The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's. — G.K. Chesterton

It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts. — Bill Vaughan

The fact that women are the primary care-givers is a problem for women and men — Caroline Criado-Perez

By ethical argument and moral principle the greatest crimes are eventually shown to have been necessary, and, in fact, a signal benefit to mankind. — Zhuangzi

All sentient beings - all holons in fact - contain Buddha-nature - contain depth, consciousness, intrinsic value, Spirit - and thus we are all members of the council of all beings ... And the ultimate objective truth is that all beings are perfect manifestations of Spirit or Emptiness — Ken Wilber

But facts are facts and flinch not. — Robert Browning

Reputations are shaped not by facts but by prejudices. — Barbara Mertz

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision. — Thomas Sowell

We lose track of everything, and of everyone, even ourselves. The facts of my father's life are less known to me than those of the life of Hadrian. My own existence, if I had to write of it, would be reconstructed by me from externals, laboriously, as if it were the life of someone else: I should have to turn to letters, and to the recollections of others, in order to clarify such uncertain memories. What is ever left but crumbled walls, or masses of shade? — Marguerite Yourcenar

Facts are such horrid things! — Jane Austen

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow. — Cyril Connolly

Facts are stupid things. — Ronald Reagan

My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of facts; my book is more like a collection of Ready-mades. — Edward Ruscha

NAEP data show beyond question that test scores in reading and math have improved for almost every group of students over the past two decades; slowly and steadily in the case of reading, dramatically in the case of mathematics. Students know more and can do more in these two basic skills subjects now than they could twenty or forty years ago... So the next time you hear someone say that the system is "broken," that American students aren't as well educated as they used to be, that our schools are failing, tell that person the facts. — Diane Ravitch

It seems everyone is converging on a simple set of facts: Our lives are digital, and we wish to share our lives. Pinterest came at it through images, artfully curated. Facebook came at it through friends, cunningly organized. Dropbox came to it via files, cleverly clouded. — John Battelle

Tell me if I'm mistaken, but isnt't that my girlfriend in the graveyard?"
"You are not mistaken."
"And she's straddling some guy."
"That's correct," said Colin.
Hassan pursed his lips and nodded. "And- I just want to make sure we have our facts straight here- she's naked."
"She certainly is."
...
And then he raced forward about ten paces, cupped his hands over his mouth, and screamed, "I AM BREAKING UP WITH YOU!" Still, though, a goofy grin was on his face. — John Green

Same thing for the bad guy. People were really after this guy Radovan Karadicz. But I came up with a combination of several people, who then became The Fox. That's who Simon Hunt and Duck are after. I did that so I could have freedom with what The Fox said and did, so that I didn't have to be stuck. Certain things I wanted to stay to the truth. Certain things I changed, and certain things are the facts. — Richard Shepard

There is a great temptation with songs, melodies and lyrics to overcomplicate them but in fact, you find that the most enduring melodies are often the simplest. — Ken Hensley

Fears are not facts. — Chaz Bono

Almost all human who can form a sentence will eventually let you in on the fact that their lives are very difficult and sometimes very hard to manage. — Henry Rollins

All of our descriptive statements move within an often invisible network of value-categories, and indeed without such categories we would have nothing to say to each other at all. It is not just as though we have something called factual knowledge which may then be distorted by particular interests and judgements, although this is certainly possible; it is also that without particular interests we would have no knowledge at all, because we would not see the point of bothering to get to know anything. Interests are constitutive of our knowledge, not merely prejudices which imperil it. The claim that knowledge should be 'value-free' is itself a value-judgement. — Terry Eagleton

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. — Mark Twain

Stocks are bought on expectations, not facts. — Gerald M. Loeb

Let's face facts, this is visual medium, there's a very high premium put on people who are good-looking. But the minute you rely on that you get yourself in trouble. You certainly don't make a career out of that anymore as an actor. — Alec Baldwin

These healers ... my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories ... But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity. — William James

There is, as Emerson says, some central idea or conception of yourself by which all the facts of your life are arranged and classified. Change this central idea and you change the arrangement or classification of all the fact and circumstances of your life. — Wallace D. Wattles

Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance. — Eleanor Roosevelt

We are captured, brother, surrounded by the majoritarian bandits of America. And this has happened here, in our only home, and the terrible truth is that we cannot will ourselves to an escape on our own. Perhaps that was, is, the hope of the movement: to awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts of what their need to be white, to talk like they are white, to think that they are white, which is to think that they are beyond the design flaws of humanity, has done to the world. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you'd say, 'Where? What?' and turn away. — Christina Rossetti

Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below. — Arthur Conan Doyle

It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselves and our globe, lest the consequences of the belief be unwelcome or discreditable to us. Could anything show more clearly the bad effects of wish-thinking? There can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look the facts squarely in the face. But this does not mean that we must stare into the abyss all the time. (Only religion, oddly enough, has ever required that we obsessively do that.) — Christopher Hitchens

The meat industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars lying to the public about their product. But no amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat. The facts are absolutely clear: Eating meat is bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment, and a living nightmare for animals — Chrissie Hynde

It is one thing to be well-read on a subject; it is quite another to be part of the subject itself. It is an unfortunate fact that there are many individuals who make magick there life without making their life magick. — Lon Milo DuQuette

Anyone who wants to understand the world should be open to new facts and new arguments, even on subjects where his or her views are very well established. Similarly, anyone truly interested in morality - in the principles of behavior that allow people to flourish - should be open to new evidence and new arguments that bear upon questions of happiness and suffering. Clearly, the chief enemy of open conversation is dogmatism in all its forms. Dogmatism — Sam Harris

To do so, we are creating a Fairness for Switzerland Committee that will not only disseminate some of the facts, but also protect a relationship that is important to all of us in North America. — Peter Munk

There is a class, moreover, by whom all these scientific theories, and more are held as ascertained facts, and as the basis of philosophical inferences which strike at the root of theistic beliefs. — Asa Gray

History is more than data, more than facts, more than science and scholarship. These things are merely the means to a greater end. History is a story - the story of ourselves. Where do we come from? How have we survived? How can we avoid the mistakes of the past? Do we matter, and if we do, what is our proper place upon the earth? — Justin Cronin

It is the masses: they are the unchangeable. An individual may emerge from the masses. But the emergence doesn't alter the mass. The masses are unalterable. It is one of the most momentous facts of social science. panem et circenses! Only today education is one of the bad substitutes for a circus. What is wrong today is that we've made a profound hash of the circuses part of the programme, and poisoned our masses with a little education. — D.H. Lawrence