“You can't make facts fit the rules, it is the other way round. The rules have to be adopted to fit the facts.”
The Time of the Hero (1963)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Mario Vargas Llosa 30
Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist 1936Related quotes
“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”
The earliest published attribution of this quote to Einstein found on Google Books is the 1991 book The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis by Raj Jain (p. 507), but no source to Einstein's original writings is given and the quote itself is older; for example New Guard: Volume 5, Issue 3 from 1961 says on p. 312 http://books.google.com/books?id=5BbZAAAAMAAJ&q=%22fit+the+theory%22#search_anchor "Someone once said that if the facts do not fit the theory, then the facts must be changed", while Product engineering: Volume 29, Issues 9-12 from 1958 gives the slight variant on p. 9 "There is an age-old adage, 'If the facts don't fit the theory, change the theory.' But too often it's easier to keep the theory and change the facts." These quotes are themselves probably variants of an even earlier saying which used the phrasing "so much the worse for the facts", many examples of which can be seen in this search http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=facts+fit+%22so+much+the+worse+for+the+facts%22&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_max:Dec%2031_2%201950&num=10; for example, the 1851 American Whig Review, Volumes 13-14 says on p. 488 http://books.google.com/books?id=910CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA488#v=onepage&q&f=false "However, Mr. Newhall may possibly have been of that casuist's opinion, who, when told that the facts of the matter did not bear out his hypothesis, said 'So much the worse for the facts.'" The German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte circa 1800 did say "If theory conflicts with the facts, so much the worse for the facts." The Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs in his "Tactics and Ethics" (1923) echoed the same quotation.
Misattributed
Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)
Source: How to Solve It (1945), p. 148
Gavin Stevens in Ch. 17; also in this chapter Gavin Stevens reflects — twice — that men are "interested in facts too".
The Town (1957)
“Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?”
Book IV, Ch. 4
The History of Tom Jones (1749)
"The Beauty of Life," a lecture before the Birmingham Society of Arts and School of Design (19 February 1880), later published in Hopes and Fears for Art: Five Lectures Delivered in Birmingham, London, and Nottingham, 1878 - 1881 (1882).
p 44
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)
Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 2.