“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.”

—  Maya Angelou

Last update March 14, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth." by Maya Angelou?
Maya Angelou photo
Maya Angelou247
American author and poet 1928–2014

Related quotes

William James photo

“There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere - no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture II, What Pragmatism Means
1900s, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)

“Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)

Andrzej Sapkowski photo

“What is truth? The negation of lies? Or the statement of a fact? And if the fact is a lie, what then is the truth?”

Andrzej Sapkowski book Sword of Destiny

Source: Sword of Destiny

Werner Herzog photo

“Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

“The great error of traditional proofs of the existence of god is that they try to take a symbolic truth for a literal truth, a truth of fact, and then try to prove that it is a fact.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 149.

Gottfried Leibniz photo

“There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposites are possible.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Il y a aussi deux sortes de vérités, celles de Raisonnement et celle de Fait. Les vérités de Raisonnement sont nécessaires et leur opposé est impossible, et celles de Fait sont contingentes et leur opposé est possible.
La monadologie (33).
The Monadology (1714)

Adlai Stevenson photo

“You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Commencement address at Michigan State University The New York Times (9 June 1958)
Context: You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal. For, in the vernacular, we Americans are suckers for good news.

Oscar Wilde photo

“The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

“People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.”

Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian

Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Related topics