Quotes about fact
page 3

“In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

Cats, Dead, Box

“I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

“I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Selected Stories

People, Help

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

Bertrand Russell book Marriage and Morals

Source: Marriage and Morals

“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Life

“There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Art, Science

“I wonder, sometimes, whether men and women in fact are capable of learning from history--whether we progress from one stage to the next in an upward course or whether we just ride the cycles of boom and bust, war and peace, ascent and decline.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Women, Men, War, Peace

“Suffering makes you live time in detail, moment after moment. Which is to say that it exists for you: over the others, the ones who don't suffer, time flows, so that they don't live in time, in fact they never have.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Suffering, Time

“Facts always are sensational.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

“Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.

Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Hope, Feeling

“We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.”

William Boyd (1952) British writer

Source: Cork

Love, Idea, Personality

“Mistakes are a fact of life: It is the response to the error that counts.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

Life, Error, Life

“Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life

Dreams, Personality, Funny, Powerful

“The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this:”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Star

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Motivation, Question

“Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Life, Understanding

“How empty is theory in the presence of fact!”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

“They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Life

“I’m very conscious of the fact that you can’t do it alone. It’s teamwork. When you do it alone you run the risk that when you are no longer there nobody else will do it.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

Source: The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience

“If we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women…”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women, Men, World, Reality

“The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others.”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Animals

“If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

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.

History

“Having made the decision, do not revise it unless some new fact comes to your knowledge. Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Knowledge, Decision, Indecision

“And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Solitude

“Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.”

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

“The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, Berkeley Hills Books (2000) p. 178

Truth, Education

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes

Source: Sherlock Holmes

“Intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike.”

Octavia E. Butler book Dawn

Dawn

Intelligence

“I know. In fact, I am never wrong.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. VIII
Following the Equator (1897)

“Things always become obvious after the fact”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

“The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

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

Happiness, Secret, World

“Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

“It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

People

“True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26 "The Civilizing Power of the Ethics of Reverence for Life"

Life

“We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

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)

Reading

“One has only to set a loved human being against the fact that we are all in peril all the time to get back a sense of proportion. What does anything matter compared to the reality of love and its span, so brief at best, maintained against such odds?”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: Journal of a Solitude

Love, Reality, Sense, Time

“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Big Lies in Politics http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/05/22/big_lies_in_politics/page/full, 22 May 2012. 2010s

People, Success

“In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Hope

“Warning: Do not read this story right after eating. In fact, don't read it right before eating either. In fact, just to be safe, don't read this story if you're ever planning to eat again.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

Source: Wayside School Is Falling Down

Reading

“The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"Official Report to the I.I.A.S.", p. 126
Papers of the Adams Family (1939)
Source: Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

“I'm sorry if any of you are catholic. I'm not sorry if you're offended, I'm actually just sorry by the fact that you're catholic”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

“All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness […] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find […] a being which immediately recognises itself, […] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

Idea, Time

“We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

The New York Times (1960), as cited in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 156

Learning

“As you go through life's rich tapestry, you realize that most people you meet aren't fit to shine your shoes. It's a sad fact, but it's true. A good friend is someone who'd hide you if you were on the run for murder. How many of them do you know?”

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

Life, People, Sadness, Shoe

“We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

God, Age, Dreams

“In fact living is dying.”

Guy De Maupassant Bel-Ami

Source: Bel-Ami

“Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

World, Law, Mathematics, Universe

“The fact is that those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!”

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Galen, On the Natural Faculties, Bk. 1, sect. 13; cited from Arthur John Brock (trans.) On the Natural Faculties (London: Heinemann, 1963) p. 57.

Knowledge, Learning

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

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)

World, Appearance, Time

“Everything that ever happened to you, you experienced right within you. Light and darkness, pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy—all of it happened within you. If someone touches your hand right now, you may think you are experiencing their hand, but the fact of the matter is you are only experiencing the sensations in your own hand. The whole experience is contained within. All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Pain, Pleasure, Thinking, Light

“One of us in this very room is in fact the murderer.”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

Source: And Then There Were None

“I’m not in favor of the government mandating a prayer in school because our country was founded on the fact that no particular religious faith would have ascendance over or preferential treatment over any other.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

School, Faith, Country

“The seed must grow regardless
Of the fact that it’s planted in stone”

Tupac Shakur book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

“I have a high pain threshold. In fact, it's more of a large and tastfully decorated foyer than a threshold. But I do get easily bored”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Pain

“Each person's life – each lifeform,
in fact – represents a world, a
unique way in which the universe experiences itself.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Life, World, Way, Universe

“Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

Thinking

“Even if it meant that she had failed, she was glad. And if what she'd wanted had been impossible from the start, still there was a certain lonely comfort in the fact that she'd known it was impossible and had gone ahead and done it anyway.”

Donna Tartt book The Little Friend

Source: The Little Friend

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

People, Truth, Way

“When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Love, Effort

“… happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves…. The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement….”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Life, Happiness, Effort, Suffering

“I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

People, Daughters

“I remained standing in the middle of the room, swaying on my feet as though I had received a blow. I thought of my life and saw what it had been. No one could swim against such a current of mud. I had been a man so horrible that he could have no friend. But wasn't that, I asked myself, because I had always been incapable of wearing a disguise? If all men went through life with unmasked faces, as I had done for half a century, one might be surprised to find how little difference there was between them. But, in fact, no one lives with his face uncovered, no one. Most men ape greatness or nobility. Though they do not know it, they conform to certain fixed types, literary or other. This the saints know, and they hate and despise themselves because they see themselves with unclouded eyes. I should not have been so universally condemned had I not been so defenseless, so open, and so naked.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

Source: Viper's Tangle

Life, Men, Hate, Universe

“In a city, you can be alone in a crowd, and in fact what makes the city a city is that it lets you hide the strangeness in your mind inside its teeming multitudes.”

Orhan Pamuk book A Strangeness in My Mind

Source: A Strangeness in My Mind

“Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.”

V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River

Source: A Bend in the River

“If you believe that life is worth living then your belief will create the fact.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Life, Wise, Positive

“Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

World, Thinking, Sense, Personality

“The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Life, People, Universe

“I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

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.

Life, People, Thinking, Sense

“Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

Understanding

“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference…”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

Source: Pensées

“You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“The only animal from which humans have nothing to learn, in fact, is the sheep. Humans have already learned everything the sheep's got to teach.”

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

Learning, Animals

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Life

“The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Letter from Lenin to Gorky https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/g2aleks.html, Sept. 15, 1919 1910s Source: The Letters Of Lenin

Education, Fight

“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

Richard Avedon (1923–2004) American photographer

Truth

“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.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

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)

World, Understanding

“It is fortunate, perhaps, that no matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all of the salient facts about any one of them.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“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

Study, Learning

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

People, Way, Thinking

“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, and beer.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

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

People, Truth, Beer, Dependency

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

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."

“The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

School, Learning

“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Men, Sleep

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

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

"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)

Life, Help, Inspirational, Depressing

“The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

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

Reality

“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

People, Thinking, Funny, Deep

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

Mark Twain book Life on the Mississippi

Source: Life on the Mississippi

Science

“They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“Truth is independent of facts always.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Truth

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness

“My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn't, couldn't end there.
At least that's what I would choose to believe.”

Barack Obama book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

“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.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

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.

Life, Men, Law

“To hell with facts! We need stories!”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Hell