Quotes about fact
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“…and you smile back and try not to think about the fact that you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Smile, Thinking

“A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Source: Awaken the Giant Within (1992), p. 49
Source: Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement

Decision

“And the worst thing she had heard were the words he hadn't said, the fact that he hadn't loved her.”

Danielle Steel book The Wedding

Source: The Wedding

Love

“Raven: "You don't have a hot date, do you?"
Alexander: "Yes. I do, as a matter of fact."
Raven: "You do?"
Alexander: "Yes, and it is almost ending.”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: The Coffin Club

“Will suspected Jem was in fact cleverer than he was himself - but he lacked Will's tendency to assume the absolute worst about people and proceed from there.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

People

“I’d been to the British museum before. In fact I’ve been in more museums than I like to admit—it makes me sound like a total geek.
[That’s Sadie in the background, yelling I am a total geek. Thanks, Sis. ]”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“The study of truth requires a considerable effort - which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge - despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for such knowledge in the minds of men.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Source: Summa Contra Gentiles

Love, Men, God, Truth

“The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Idea

“… The pain didn't bother me. In fact, I welcome it: It meant I was alive.”

Darren Shan book The Vampire's Assistant

Source: The Vampire's Assistant

Pain

“And there's no getting around the fact that all life lives at the expense of another life.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Ring of Endless Light

Source: A Ring of Endless Light

Life

“My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Context: My favorite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantelpiece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

Tree

“These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Hope, Parting

“If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Love, God, Appearance, Evil

“You have a steady fella?” Sam asked after a bit.

“No fella can hold me for long.”

Sam gave her a sideways glance. “That a challenge?”

“No. A statement of fact.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Life

“That's great. Except for the fact that it's completely unimportant.”

Rick Riordan The Maze of Bones

Source: The Maze of Bones

“Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all…”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Police are inevitably corrupted…. Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.”

Frank Herbert book God Emperor of Dune

Source: God Emperor of Dune

“Asked about the fact that Apple's iTunes software for Windows computers was extremely popular, Jobs joked, 'It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.”

Walter Isaacson (1952) American writer and biographer

Hell, Water

“What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?…God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Essays, The Triumph of Easter (1938)
Source: The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays

God, Business, Evil, Dead

“Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

“breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Dreams, Drink, Sleep

“Women need chocolate. It's a scientific fact.”

Sophie Kinsella book Remember Me?

Source: Remember Me?

Women

“Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: The Guide for the Perplexed

Truth, World

“The fact is that being seductive is an addiction that can never be satisfied.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Strange Pilgrims

Source: Strange Pilgrims

“I could never pretend something I didn't feel. I could never make love if I didn't love, and if I loved I could no more hide the fact than change the color of my eyes.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: My Story

Love, Making love, Color, Feeling

“The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts.”

John Muir book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk To the Gulf, 1916, chapter 6: Cedar Keys, page 160
Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

World, Support

“You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

People, Behavior, Learning

“I am a person who works well under pressure. In fact, I work so well under pressure that at times, I will procrastinate in order to create this pressure.”

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (1968) Canadian writer

Time, Personality

“Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?”

James Agee book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Source: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

“I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

Cars, Feeling, Rage, Summer

“I came to Party Crashing because accidents happen. People you love will die. Nothing you treasure will last forever. And I need to accept and embrace that fact.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Love, People

“And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Change

“Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

“Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

“I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Story of the Malakand Field Force

Early career years (1898–1929)
Source: The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter III.

Sea

“Be very, very careful not to let the facts get mixed up with the truth.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

Truth

“God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

God, Books

“I didn’t know what was more disturbing—the fact that something was obviously wrong, or that three faculty members of the world’s premiere spy school had forgotten to lock the door.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

World, School

“And I know now that all the time I was trying to get
out of the dust,
the fact is,
what I am,
I am because of the dust.
And what I am is good enough.
Even for me.”

Karen Hesse book Out of the Dust

Source: Out of the Dust

Time

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

Misattributed <br class="br">Source: thought to be Gibson's words as a result of Twitter attribution decay, despite repeated disavowals. https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144940064990961664 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941061578559488 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/144941447936884736 https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal/status/171091202161131520. The source, according to Gibson, is Steven Winterburn https://twitter.com/greatdismal/status/119133581598666752 https://twitter.com/5tevenw/status/73091190475595776. However, Steven Winterburn is NOT the original creator of that quote. The original quote is the creation of Twitter account holder "@debihope" https://twitter.com/debihope?lang=en. See research by quoteinvestigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/25/diagnose/.

Powerful

“The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Reality, Time

“Show no fear to your enemies. Only contempt. Never let anyone look down on you. You're just as good as any of them. I don't care who they are. Better in fact. In our world, Dagans are royalty and you, my son, are a prince.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Shadows

World, Fear

“You do not need to work to become spiritual. Youspiritual; you need only to remember that fact. Spirit is within you. God is within you. (67)”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Source: God is No Laughing Matter

God

“One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favorite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one's dressing gown.”

Stella Gibbons book Cold Comfort Farm

Source: Cold Comfort Farm

Education, Feeling, Universe, Personality

“It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.”

Thomas Bernhard book Gargoyles

Source: Gargoyles

Sadness

“All of us have our own inner fears, beliefs, opinions. These inner assumptions rule and govern our lives. A suggestion has no power in and of itself. its power arises from the fact that you accept it mentally.”

Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Fear

“The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind. (Fun fact.)”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Love, Feeling

“You can only be in a bad mood for so long before you have to face up to the fact that it isn't a bad mood at all; it's just your sucky personality.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Sloppy Firsts

Mood, Personality

“Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

“The fact thatis the word we use for almost everything—on terrorism, drugs, even poverty—has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be?”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

Source: A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

War, Help

“No, none of us seem so very real.

We're only supporting characters in the lives of each other.

Any real truth, any precious fact will always be lost in a mountain of shattered make-believe.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Tell-All

Source: Tell-All

Truth, Mountain, Support

“She supposed that houses, after all - like the lives that were lived in them - were mostly made of space. It was the spaces, in fact, which counted, rather than the bricks.”

Sarah Waters The Night Watch

Source: The Night Watch

Housing

“Everything you see is based on fact of a event thats already happen, Even light only travels so fast.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

Travel, Light

“I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Thinking

“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

William James, "Is Life Worth Living?," The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897).
Misattributed

Life, Help, Inspirational, Depressing

“Man, that did his ego good. Matter of fact, she hit him with anything like that again, he was going to feel like he could bench-press a city bus. With a jet plane on its roof.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

Feeling

“If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?”

Margaret Atwood book Power Politics

Source: Power Politics

Love

“She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Literature

“I didn’t want to tell the story of myself, but someone I called myself. If you read yourself as fiction, it’s rather more liberating than reading yourself as fact.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Reading

“Knowing the precies answers is not as crucial as the certainty that the answers do, in fact, exist.”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Feathered Serpent, Part 2

“Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Source: All The Pretty Horses: All The Pretty Horses

Question

“That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Blindfold

Night

“If you dont like me, Walk away, Matter of fact Run Away”

Virginia Euwer Wolff book Make Lemonade

Source: Make Lemonade

“It's actually a rather romantic and dramatic story --- one I would eagerly tell you, except for the fact that I recently forgot it, based on it being far too long and having not enough decapitations.”

Brandon Sanderson book Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

“If we were always conscious of the fact that people precious to us are frighteningly mortal, hanging not even by a thread, but by a wisp of gossamer, perhaps we would be kinder to them and more grateful for the love and friendship they give to us.”

Dean Koontz book Seize the Night

Source: Seize the Night

Love, Friendship, People

“I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Happiness, Sadness, Feeling, Personality

“I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Sadness, Sea

“Rats have a sense of humor. Rats, in fact think the world is very funny. And they are right, dear reader. They are right.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

World, Thinking, Sense

“Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Religion, Way

“Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.”

Maureen Dowd (1952) American journalist

Guy, Thinking

“They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

People

“Just because a person isn't talking about something doesn't mean it's not on their mind. Often, in fact, it's why they won't speak of it.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Personality

“The maker of the stars would rather die for you than live without you. And that is a fact. So if you need to brag, brag about that.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear

Star

“It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case." --”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

“I know all about the facts of life, and I don't think much of them.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Life, Thinking

“And I have no desire to get ugly,
But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Good Intentions (1942), Seeing Eye to Eye is Believing

Help

“Fiction is truth, even if it is not fact. If you believe only in facts and forget stories, your brain will live, but your heart will die.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Truth, Heart, Forgetting

“Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.”

Barry Hughart book Bridge of Birds

Source: Bridge of Birds

Truth, Strong

“But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Secret, Nature

“She who showed weakness to teenagers would be picked on to death. True fact of life.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Life, Death

“When they made up, it was as if nothing had happened at all. In fact, it was like they were stuck even closer together, like they had gotten even more tangled in each other.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

“One of the virtues of being very young is that you don't let the facts get in the way of your imagination.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

Way, Imagination

“She looked at me, like she was drinking in the fact that I was still here. And I realized I was doing the same thing. The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

World, Drink

“Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Variant: A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie.
Source: Trattato di semiotica generale (1975); [A Theory of Semiotics] (1976)

Truth, Lie, Study

“There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Freedom

“I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love

“Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.”

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Source: The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Life, Law, Science

“Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Death

“The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.”

Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) Social psychologist

Source: Obedience to Authority

Personality

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
That hope always triumphs over experience —
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

"Credo" at his official website http://robertfulghum.com/index.php/fulghumweb/credo/; this may be partly influenced by remarks of Albert Einstein in "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929): I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. <br class="br">Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Love, Death, Dreams, Hope

“It's not fair."

"It's not. But then, that's the game. It makes life great. The fact that it ends when we don't want it to. The ending gives it meaning.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Life, Game

“Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Life, Dreams, Future

“I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good with one standard and the shadow with another.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 33, “Juniper: The Encounter” (p. 367)
Context: I do not believe in evil absolute. I have recounted that philosophy in specific in the Annals, and it affects my every observation throughout my tenure as Annalist. I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good with one standard and the shadow with another.

Men, Evil