“We must trust to nothing but facts”

Source: Elements of Chemistry (1790), pp. xviii
Context: We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

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Antoine Lavoisier photo
Antoine Lavoisier 7
French chemist 1743–1794

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Frequently attributed to Deming; it appears in The Deming Management Method, by Mary Walton, 1986, p. 96 https://books.google.com/books?id=4tPlxq76ssYC&pg=PA96&dq=%22in%20god%20we%20trust.%20all%20others%20must%20use%20data.%22, without any attribution, to Deming or anyone else:
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