Charles Hoy Fort citations

Charles Hoy Fort, né à Albany, aux États-Unis le 9 août 1874 et mort à New York le 3 mai 1932, est un écrivain américain qui s'est attaché à décrire de nombreux phénomènes inexpliqués et considérés par ceux qui y croient comme des phénomènes paranormaux. Son œuvre est à l'origine du mouvement fortéen qui, s'il est méconnu dans le monde francophone, est relativement important dans le monde anglo-saxon. Le magazine Fortean Times est la publication la plus importante de ce mouvement. En France, sa pensée a donné naissance au courant du réalisme fantastique à partir de 1960.



« Une procession de damnés.Par les damnés j'entends bien les exclus.Nous tiendrons une procession de toutes les données que la Science a jugé bon d'exclure. »



— Trois premières phrases du Livre des damnés, de Charles Fort

Son œuvre s'est attachée à recenser et documenter des phénomènes non expliqués ou extraordinaires et à proposer des hypothèses souvent farfelues, absurdes ou pour le moins originales en guise d'explication.

C'est le premier chercheur « sérieux » sur les phénomènes paranormaux, sur les ovnis, etc. Mais il se distingue de ses descendants par son ton mordant, humoristique, provocant et, paradoxalement, sceptique. Pour lui, on ne peut rien prouver sur quoi que ce soit. Robert Benayoun a assez bien défini sa méthode : « la connaissance par l'absurde ».



« Peut-être suis-je le pionnier d'une littérature à venir dont les traîtres et les héros seront des raz-de-marée et des étoiles, des scarabées et des tremblements de terre. »



— C.H. Fort Wikipedia  

✵ 6. août 1874 – 3. mai 1932   •   Autres noms Чарльз Форт
Charles Hoy Fort photo
Charles Hoy Fort: 30   citations 0   J'aime

Charles Hoy Fort: Citations en anglais

“If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin”

Charles Fort livre Lo!

Pt 1, Ch. 1 http://www.resologist.net/lo101.htm
Lo! (1931)
Contexte: 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.

“My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things.”

Ch. 2 http://www.resologist.net/talent02.htm
Wild Talents (1932)
Contexte: 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?

“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.”

Charles Fort livre Lo!

Pt 1, Ch. 4 http://www.resologist.net/lo104.htm
Lo! (1931)
Contexte: 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 can not 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. For whatever is supposed to be meant by progress, there is no need in human minds for standards of their own: this is in the sense that no part of a growing plant needs guidance of its own devising, nor special knowledge of its own as to how to become a leaf or a root. It needs no base of its own, because the relative wholeness of the plant is relative baseness to its parts. At the same time, in the midst of this theory of submergence, I do not accept that human minds are absolute nonentities, just as I do not accept that a leaf, or a root, of a plant, though so dependent upon a main body, and so clearly only a part, is absolutely without something of an individualizing touch of its own.
It is the problem of continuity-discontinuity, which perhaps I shall have to take up sometime.

“My general expression is that all human beings who can do anything; and dogs that track unseen quarry, and homing pigeons, and bird-charming snakes, and caterpillars who transform into butterflies, are magicians.”

Ch. 27 http://www.resologist.net/talent27.htm
Wild Talents (1932)
Contexte: My general expression is that all human beings who can do anything; and dogs that track unseen quarry, and homing pigeons, and bird-charming snakes, and caterpillars who transform into butterflies, are magicians. … Considering modern data, it is likely that many of the fakirs of the past, who are now known as saints, did, or to some degree did, perform the miracles that have been attributed to them. Miracles, or stunts, that were in accord with the dominant power of the period were fostered, and miracles that conflicted with, or that did not contribute to, the glory of the Church, were discouraged, or were savagely suppressed. There could be no development of mechanical, chemical, or electric miracles —
And that, in the succeeding age of Materialism — or call it the Industrial Era — there is the same state of subservience to a dominant, so that young men are trained to the glory of the job, and dream and invent in fields that are likely to interest stockholders, and are schooled into thinking that all magics, except their own industrial magics, are fakes, superstitions, or newspaper yarns.

“The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open.”

Source: The Book of The Damned (1919), Ch. 3, part 2 at resologist.net

“The outrageous is the reasonable, if introduced politely.”

Source: The Book of The Damned (1919), Ch. 2, part 2 at resologist.net

“Existence is Appetite: the gnaw of being; the one attempt of all things to assimilate to some higher attempt.”

Source: The Book of The Damned (1919), Ch. 5, part 1 at resologist.net

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

Ch. 22 http://www.resologist.net/talent22.htm; sometimes paraphrased "I can conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is anything more than the proper thing to wear, for a while."
Wild Talents (1932)

“One can't learn much and also be comfortable. One can't learn much and let anybody else be comfortable.”

Ch. 6 http://www.resologist.net/talent06.htm
Wild Talents (1932)

“If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?”

This has become widely attributed to Fort, but originates with Damon Knight, who in Charles Fort : Prophet of the Unexplained (1970) used the expression to sum up the nature of some of Fort's ideas or inquiries.
Misattributed

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