“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
As quoted in "An Interview with Mark Twain" http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/seatosea/chapter37.html, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel (1899) by Rudyard Kipling, Ch. 37, p. 180 <br class="br">Commonly paraphrased as: "First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure."