“We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe when compared with a stubborn theory.”
Source: The Gentle Reader (1903), p. 277
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Samuel McChord Crothers 3
American minister 1857–1927Related quotes

Wayne, in a 1 May 1794 letter to the contractors who had failed to properly provision the Legion of the United States.
Attributed
Source: [Sword, Wiley, President Washington's Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790-1795, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1985, 0-8061-2488-1, 265]

Translation of Gil Blas (1749), Book X, Chap. 1.
Also used by Bernard Mandeville in An Enquiry Into the Origin of Honour (1732), p. 162, and by Jared Elliot in Essay on Field Husbandry (1747), p. 35.

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

Source: 1980s–1990s, A Conflict of Visions (1987), Ch. 1 : The Role of Vision

1770s, Boston Massacre trial (1770)
Variant: Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Source: The Portable John Adams

2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)