Quotes about fact
page 3
“I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Selected Stories
“There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.”
Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
“Mistakes are a fact of life: It is the response to the error that counts.”
Source: Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
Source: The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience
Speech to the House of Commons (8 June 1982) http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1982/60882a.htm
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)
Context: From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.... If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.
“Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.”
Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, Berkeley Hills Books (2000) p. 178
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. VIII
Following the Equator (1897)
“Things always become obvious after the fact”
“The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”
Said in conversation with Mrs. Alan Wood; quoted in Alan Wood's Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic (Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 236-7
1950s
“Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.”
“It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously”
Source: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26 "The Civilizing Power of the Ethics of Reverence for Life"
1945 Source: [Kaufman, Charlie, Inspirational Writing Advice From Charlie Kaufman - On Writing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRfXcWT_oFs, YouTube, BAFTA Guru, 2017-01-06, 2020-03-09] (at 7:08 of 41:08)
Source: Journal of a Solitude
Big Lies in Politics http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/05/22/big_lies_in_politics/page/full, 22 May 2012.
2010s
"Official Report to the I.I.A.S.", p. 126
Papers of the Adams Family (1939)
Source: Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
Source: Phenomenology of Perception
The New York Times (1960), as cited in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 156
“We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”
Source: Life, the Universe and Everything
Galen, On the Natural Faculties, Bk. 1, sect. 13; cited from Arthur John Brock (trans.) On the Natural Faculties (London: Heinemann, 1963) p. 57.
This has been compared to Horace Walpole's statement: "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."
Variant translation: Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as farce.
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
“The seed must grow regardless
Of the fact that it’s planted in stone”
Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete
Source: The Little Friend
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
“Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.”
Source: A Bend in the River
“If you believe that life is worth living then your belief will create the fact.”
As quoted in My Love Affair with David Lynch and Peachy Like Nietzsche: Dark Clown Porn Snuff for Terrorists and Gorefiends (2005) by Jason Rogers, p. 7
Context: I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.
Source: Moving Pictures
“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.”
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
Letter from Lenin to Gorky https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/g2aleks.html, Sept. 15, 1919
1910s
Source: The Letters Of Lenin
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Context: This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (5.62)
“April: Sky Dance”, p. 32-33.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "April: Come High Water," "April: Draba," "April: Bur Oak," & "April:Sky Dance"
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.”
Source: Witches Abroad
Misattributed to Lincoln by several authors since about 2000. Source of quote: General Douglas MacArthur is quoted as saying, "Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts" (John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur, New York: Harper, 1950, p. 61). By the 1970s, the phrase is quoted in several places without the words "Like Abraham Lincoln," and attributed directly to Lincoln. The additional phrase "and beer" first appears in a list of jokes published online in 1999.
Misattributed
“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
As quoted in "An Interview with Mark Twain" http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/seatosea/chapter37.html, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel (1899) by Rudyard Kipling, Ch. 37, p. 180
Commonly paraphrased as: "First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure."
Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”
1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
"Is Life Worth Living?"
Variant: Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
Source: 1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
Section 3 : Work Democracy versus Politics. The Natural Social Forces for the Mastery of the Emotional Plague;
Variant translation: The fact that political ideologies are tangible, active realities does not prove their necessity. The bubonic plague was an extremely potent social reality. But nobody would have argued that, because it existed, it was necessary and nothing should be done about it.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”
“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”
Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness
Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Source: The Law (1850)
Context: Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
"Note on Dogma"
Proper Studies (1927)
Source: Complete Essays 2, 1926-29
