Quotes about fact
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Variant: I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
“There comes a point where emotions must give way to objective facts.”
Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Source: Xingu and other Stories
“Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts.
-"The Blood-Stained Pavement”
Source: The Thirteen Problems
“The fact that the price must be paid is proof it is worth paying.”
al'Lan Mandragoran
(15 January 1990)
Source: The Eye of the World
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
“Heroes aren't allowed to be nervous."
"Who made up that rule?"
"It's a known fact…”
Source: The Seeress of Kell
Source: The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See
Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Source: No Way Out (2002), Ch. 7: What Kind Of Human Being Do You Want?
Context: The fact is that we don't want to be free. What is responsible for our problems is the fear of losing what we have and what we know. All these therapies, all these techniques, religious or otherwise, are only perpetuating the agony of man.
“And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.”
Source: Cleopatra: A Life
"The Ponds"
House of Light (1990)
"On Probability and Possibility"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)
Context: Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 57.
Context: Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales. … Knowing nothing and fearing everything, they rant and rave and riot like so many maniacs. The subject does not matter. Any idea which gives them an excuse of getting excited will serve. They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally avowable emotion. It may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman or even a doctor whose views displease the Medial Trust.
“My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.”
Source: Experience: A Memoir
Source: Manual De Traduccion / A Textbook of Translation
"The Absolute Collective", an essay first published in The Criterion on The Absolute Collective : A Philosophical Attempt to Overcome Our Broken State by Erich Gutkind, as translated by Marjorie Gabain
The Wisdom of the Heart (1941)
Context: All about us we see a world in revolt; but revolt is negative, a mere finishing-off process. In the midst of destruction we carry with us also our creation, our hopes, our strength, our urge to be fulfilled. The climate changes as the wheel turns, and what is true for the sidereal world is true for man. The last two thousand years have brought about a duality in man such as he never experienced before, and yet the man who dominates this whole period was one who stood for wholeness, one who proclaimed the Holy Ghost. No life in the whole history of man has been so misinterpreted, so woefully misunderstood as Christ's. If not a single Man has shown himself capable of following the example of Christ, and doubtless none ever will for we shall no longer have need of Christs, nevertheless this one profound example has altered our climate. Unconsciously we are moving into a new realm of being; what we have brought to perfection, in our zeal to escape the true reality, is a complete arsenal of destruction; when we have rid ourselves of the suicidal mania for a beyond we shall begin the life of here and now which is reality and which is sufficient unto itself. We shall have no need for art or religion because we shall be in ourselves a work of art. This is how I interpret realistically what Gutkind has set forth philosophically; this is the way in which man will overcome his broken state. If my statements are not precisely in accord with the text of Gutkind's thesis, I nevertheless am thoroughly in accord with Gutkind and his view of things. I have felt it my duty not only to set forth his doctrine, but to launch it, and in launching it to augment it, activate it. Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery. I am one man who can truly say that he has understood and acted upon this profound thought of Gutkind's —“the stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything we do."
Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. xxxii
“Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life….”
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
“Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.”
“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”
Source: Miss Julia Throws a Wedding
“Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.”
Source: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God
Preface, The importance of hell in the salvation scheme
Source: 1910s, Androcles and the Lion (1913)
Context: The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.
Source: No Way Out (2002), Ch. 7: What Kind Of Human Being Do You Want?
Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny
Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: Softmindedness often invades religion. … Softminded persons have revised the Beautitudes to read "Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God." This has led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. … Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
Source: Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters
“I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.”
Letter to Michele Besso (8 October 1952). According to Scientifically speaking: a dictionary of quotations, Volume 1 (2002), p. 154 http://books.google.com/books?id=FFIBzawsfPEC&lpg=PR1&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q&f=false, the letter is reprinted on p. 487 of Correspondance 1903-1955 (1972) by Michele Besso.
1950s
“The facts are always less than what really happened.”
Source: The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985
Source: Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“I'm a big believer in putting things off, In fact, I even put off procrastinating.
-Ella Varner”
Source: Smooth Talking Stranger
“Our relationship is complicated by the fact that I am emotionally retarded.”
Source: Heartsick