“People prefer to listen to Stories…
rather than to Facts.”

—  Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Last update May 20, 2022. History

Related quotes

Núria Añó photo

“I prefer to be on the side of losers, the misunderstood or lonely people rather than writing about the strong and powerful.”

Núria Añó (1973) Catalan writer novelist

“A belief in the purposeful complexity of Fate is always more comforting than random, straightforward facts. This may be why Mother preferred to believe in Atlantis and UFOs rather than in virtually everything else.”

Bradley Denton (1958) American science fiction author

Source: Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede (1991), p. 26

Orson Scott Card photo

“I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Alexandre Dumas photo

“I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

William Winwood Reade photo

“Men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter III, "Liberty"

“For maturity is marked by the preference to be defeated rather than have a subjective success.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XII : The Will as a Maker of Truth, p. 140.
Context: For maturity is marked by the preference to be defeated rather than have a subjective success. We as mature persons can worship only that which we are compelled to worship. If we are offered a man-made God and a self-answering prayer, we will rather have no God and no prayer. There can be no valid worship except that in which man is involuntarily bent by the presence of the Most Real, beyond his will.

“Rather than being a measure and consequence of the power of naturally occurring sexual desire, pornography is a measure of the extent to which people tend to prefer controlling desire through contrivance rather than being surprised by desire that spontaneously arises.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 137

William Winwood Reade photo

“There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies rather than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth, which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter III, "Liberty", p. 315.

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