Quotes about fact (7439 quotes, page 60)

“The essence of slavery is to imagine yourself to be a process, to have past and future, to have history. In fact, we have no history, we are not a process, we do not develop, nor decay (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Freedom
Source: I am That, P.189.

Imagination , History , Past , Future

“If we can open ourselves to ourselves and each other, as women, only then can we begin to fight for and create, in fact reclaim, not "Lesbian Nation" or "Amazon Nation"—let alone some false state of equality—but a real Feminist Revolution, a proud gynocratic world that runs on the power of women. Not in the male sense of power, but in the sense of a power plant—producing energy. And to each, that longing for, that right to, a great love filled in reality, for all women, and children and men and animals and trees and water and all life, an exquisite diversity in unity. That world breathed and exulted on this planet some twelve thousand years ago, before the patriarchy arose to crush it.”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

Going Too Far, p. 187.

Love , Life , Women , Men

“A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed. In so far as such a theory is empirically correct it will also tell us what empirical facts it should be possible to observe in a given set.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Source: The structure of social action (1937), p. 8

“One never knows whether the Poet is speaking fact, fancy, or allegory. If fancy is clever enough, I doubt that the Poet would admit a difference between fancy and fact.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 21
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux

“Animation in itself is an art form, and that's the point I think always needs clarification. True animation exists without any background, or any color, or any sound, or anything else; it exists in your hand. And you can take it and flip it. […] What makes animation is the fact that you have a series of drawings that move. You don't even have to have a camera, you see; animation exists without it. If you want to broaden your audience, or make it more colorful or add music, then you put it under a camera one frame at a time, and then you run it at the same speed as you flip it, and then you have animation. If it depends basically upon soundtrack, or basically upon music, or color, graphic design, or anything else to sustain itself, then it is not unique to animation.”

Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films

Joe Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats: An Interview with Chuck Jones [1971]", in Chuck Jones: conversations, ed. Chuck Jones and Maureen Furniss (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2005), 63.

Art , Music , Color , Thinking

“Were one to stop and think of what meat is, and what it was, it is doubtful if one could eat it. It is merely dead and decaying flesh — flesh from the body of an animal. … Only by the fact that they are covered up, and their true nature concealed by cooking, and basting, and pickling, and peppering and salting can we eat them at all. If we were natural carnivorous animals, we should delight in bloodshed and gore of all kind! … We should eat our flesh warm and quivering — just as it comes from the cow!”

Hereward Carrington (1880–1958) Jersey parapsychologist

Source: The Natural Food for Man, p. 160-161

Nature , Thinking , Animals , Cooking

“In fact, maybe Metcalfe's Law is the formula for Doug Engelbart's scaling of human knowledge, just as Watt'ssteam engine scaled human power.”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part V, The Next Barrier, Packet Racket, p. 190.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

Law , Knowledge

“The explanation for capturing the vessel is perhaps to be found in Barroes’ remark: ‘It is true that there does exist a common right to all to navigate the seas and in Europe we recognize the rights which others hold against us; but the right does not extend beyond Europe and therefore the Portuguese as Lords of the Sea are justified in confiscating the goods of all those who navigate the seas without their permission.’ Strange and comprehensive claim, yet basically one which every European nation, in its turn, held firmly almost to the end of Western supremacy in Asia. It is true that no other nation put it forward so crudely or tried to enforce it so barbarously as the Portuguese in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but the principle that the doctrines of international law did not apply outside Europe, that what would be barbarism in London or Paris is civilized conduct in Peking (e. g. the burning of the Summer Palace) and that European nations had no moral obligations in dealing with Asian peoples (as for example when Britain insisted on the opium trade against the laws of China, though opium smoking was prohibited by law in England itself) was pact of the accepted creed of Europe’s relations with Asia. So late as 1870 the President of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce declared: ‘China can in no sense be considered a country entitled to all the same rights and privileges as civilized nations which are bound by international law.’ Till the end of European domination the fact that rights existed for Asians against Europeans was conceded only with considerable mental reservation. In countries under direct British occupation, like India, Burma and Ceylon, there were equal rights established by law, but that as against Europeans the law was not enforced very rigorously was known and recognized. In China, under extra‑territorial jurisdiction, Europeans were protected against the operation of Chinese laws. In fact, except in Japan this doctrine of different rights persisted to the very end and was a prime cause of Europe’s ultimate failure in Asia.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

People , Law , Failure , Sense

“There was also a real Dayton out there, a charming small Ohio city, famous as the birthplace of the Wright Brothers. Its citizens energized us from the outset. Unlike the population of, say, Noew York, Geneva or Washington, which would scarcely notice another conference, Daytonians were proud to be part of history. Large signs at the commercial airport hailed Dayton as the "temporary center of international peace". The local newspapers and television stations covered the story from every angle, drawing the people deeper into the proceedings. When we ventured into a restaurant or a shopping center downtown, people crowded around, aying that they were praying for us. Warren Christopher was given at least one standing ovation in a restaurant. Families on the air base placed "candles of peace" in their front windows, and people gathered in peace vigils outside the base. One day they formed a "peace chain", although it was not large enough to surround the sprawling eight-thousand-acre base. Ohio's famous ethnic diversity was only on display. We did everything possible to emphasize the fact that in the American heartland people from every part of southeastern Europe lived together in peace, their competition restricted to softball games, church rivalries, and the occasional barroom fight. (…)”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 234

People , Family , Peace , History

“Without the hard little bits of marble which are called 'facts' or 'data' one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.”

Arthur Koestler book The Act of Creation

The Act of Creation (1970).

Success

“Art can only be truly art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Part II, Things and Thoughts of Europe, p. 198.
At Home And Abroad (1856)

Life , Art

“Hence when the man of science says, 'There is no God,' he only gives voice to the feeling of the inadequacy of the old anthropomorphic conception, in the presence of the astounding facts of the universe.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. XI: Points of View

God , Feeling , Universe , Science

“Negro weddings were attended by white people who joined in the celebration. If the marriages were of a rather impermanent nature, that fact was frequently considered as 'one of the blessings of slavery.' At church and camp meetings the Negroes, in their own section of the building or tabernacle, enjoyed the experiences immensely. They could shout without restraint, while the masters, in order to preserve their dignity, had to repress their emotions. It made little difference if religion was thrown off soon after the camp meeting dissolved -- backsliding was pleasant, and there was always a chance to get intoxicatingly converted again.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Marriage , People , Religion , Nature

“Right in the Heart of the African Jungle a small white man lives. Now there is one extraordinary fact about him that he is the frind of all animals.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Written by Durrell at age ten (1935), from Gerald Durrell: An Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting (1999), p. 43, ISBN 0-786-70655-4

Heart , Animals

“All the walls of a city, which, by family tradition, seemed so mine, witnessed the martyrdom and the inhumane repression inflicted on our people. Cultural memories stressed its urgency. All the archaeological information I have absorbed, the advice of Leonardo da Vinci, the destruction brought about by Dada, the photographs of Brassaï, all contributed, unsurprisingly, to the fact that my first works of 1945 had something to do with street graffiti and a universe of repressed protest, clandestine yet full of life, as one could find on the walls of my country.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Tàpies is referring to the Franco-repression in Spain.
1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970

Life , People , Family , Universe

“[It is a] well-known fact that the likely contacts of two individuals who are closely acquainted tend to be more overlapping than those of two arbitrarily selected individuals”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport (1954, p. 75); as quoted in: Samuel Leinhardt (1977) Social Networks: A Developing Paradigm, p. 350
1950s

“This exaltation of man over the entire natural world, however, though easily shown to accord with the teaching of Jesus, and to be clearly prefigured in it, is nearly antipodal to ordinary notions, to the current popular "philosophy" assumed to be founded on science, and to much of traditional theology. But by this fact we must not be disturbed, if we mean to be in earnest about human freedom and human capability of life really moral and religious. And the next step in our inquiry will reinforce this "divinising of the human " very decidedly.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.326

Life , World , Nature , Freedom

“The modern universe, as machine and man had come to understand it, needed no Creator; in fact, allowed no Creator. Its rules allowed very little tinkering and no major revisions. It had not begun and would not end, beyond cycles of expansion and contraction as regular and self-regulated as the seasons on Old Earth. No room for love there.
It seemed that Abraham had offered to murder his son to test a phantom.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 45 (pp. 492-493)

Love , Understanding , Universe , Season

“It is widely believed that in our quantum world physical facts about occurrences in space time must be grounded in the wave function. There are several long recognized and much discussed difficulties with this view.”

Detlef Dürr (1951) German mathematician and physicist

Daniel Bedingham, Detlef Dürr, GianCarlo Ghirardi, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka, Nino Zanghì, "Matter Density and Relativistic Models of Wave Function Collapse", J Stat Phys (2014) 154:623–631

World , Time

“There is no point in hiding that before the war we mostly learned to attack, and did not pay enough attention to such an important manoeuvre as retreat. Now we have paid for this. It turned out that the commanders and the staff were not sufficiently prepared to prepare and execute the retreat manoeuvre. Now, in the second week of war, we had in fact to learn from the beginning the most difficult art - the art of the execution of retreat.”

Hovhannes Bagramyan (1897–1982) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The System of the International Organizations of the Communist Countries" - Page 36 - by Richard Szawlowski - 1976

War , Art , Learning

“I think the answer is that the case stands for the proposition that business people who feel that their faith is being burdened, that they get to come into court and have their day at court and make this argument. So, you cannot keep them out of court just because they’re business folks. And that is going to apply to everybody from the cake baker, to kosher butchers, to halal food distributors, across the board. Now, how those future cases will come out will depend on the specific facts of the case, of course. But I think that the general proposition here is a really, really important one. And that is that you do not give up your religious liberty right if you choose to start a business.”

Josh Hawley (1979) United States Senator from Missouri

Interview with Hobby Lobby attorney Joshua Hawley http://mbcpathway.com/2014/06/30/interview-hobby-lobby-attorney-joshua-hawley/ (June 30, 2014)

People , Faith , Food , Feeling

“Whenever like mates with like (genetically), the statistical distribution curve, which describes the frequency of the purely fortuitous combinations of genes, is flattened out, its mode is depressed, and its extremes are increased. The reduces the number of the mediocre produced and increases the numbers both of the sub-normal and the talented groups. It is possible that, without this increase in the number of extreme variants, no nation, race or group could produce enough superior individuals to maintain a complex culture. Certainly not enough to operate or advance a civilization. …Any number of social customs have stood, and still stand, in the way of an optimum amount of selective matings. In a feudal society, opportunities are denied to many able men who, consequently, never develop to the high level of their biological potential and thus they remain among the undistinguished. Such able men (and women) might also be diffused throughout an "ideal" classless society and, lacking the means to separate themselves from the generality, or to develop their peculiar talents, would be effectively swamped. In such a society they could hardly segregate in groups. In fact, only a few of the able males might ever meet an able female who appealed to them erotically. Obviously an open society—one in which the able may rise and the dim-wits sick, and where like intelligences have a greater chance of meeting and mating—has advantages that other societies do not have. Our own society today—incidentally and without design—is providing more and more opportunities for intelligent matrimonial discrimination. It is possible that our co-educational colleges, where highly-selected males and females meet when young, are as important in their function of bringing together the parents of our future superior individuals as they are in educating the present crop.”

Conway Zirkle (1895–1972)

"Some Biological Aspects of Individualism," Essays on Individuality (Philadelphia: 1958), pp. 59-61

Women , Men , Education , Way

“The one good thing to be said about announcing yourself as a writer in the colonial Canadian fifties is that nobody told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl. They simply found the entire proposition ridiculous. Writers were dead and English, or else extremely elderly and American; they were not sixteen years old and Canadian. It would have been worse if I'd been a boy, though. Never mind the fact that all the really stirring poems I'd read at that time had been about slaughter, mayhem, sex and death — poetry was thought of as existing in the pastel female realm, along with embroidery and flower arranging. If I'd been male I would probably have had to roll around in the mud, in some boring skirmish over whether or not I was a sissy.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

On Writing Poetry (1995)

Death , Sex , Girl , Boy

“I don’t see any moral difference between a suicide bomber and somebody in a F-16 fighter jet who fires a missile into an apartment complex and then kills 10 or 15 little girls and boys. I don’t see much difference there. In fact, I think the pilot is a greater offender, you know, he’s getting medals, while the suicide bomber is sacrificing his life for what he believes in. But I don’t agree with either approach. I’m absolutely opposed to any sort of terrorism. (…) But if you call Hezbollah a terrorist organization, then you must call Israel a terrorist organization.”

David Duke (1950) American White nationalist, white supremacist, writer, right-wing politician, and a former Republican Louisiana …

Podcast on The Israeli Invasion and Bombing of Lebanon (10 August 2006) http://www.davidduke.com/mp3/dukeradio060810.mp3

Life , Girl , Boy , Thinking

“We are not empire builders. How important this fact is no American who has not lived in Asia can appreciate. It goes against our conscience, which is a very tender part of the American spirit. Therefore we are learning how to hold our allies, not by force of arms and government, but by mutual benefit and friendship. So much is already clear…
I am therefore hopeful. In spite of dismaying contradictions in individuals in our national scene, I feel the controlling spirit or our people, generous, decent, and sane. In this mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: My Several Worlds (1954), p. 407, This has sometimes been quoted as "In a mood of faith and hope..."

Friendship , People , Books , Faith

“This life, my dear bird, consists of a haphazard sequence of accidental meetings and partings, very few of which can ever be anticipated, avoided or fully understood. The element of sheer Chance, my friend, conflicting as it does with the first principles of Causation, denies any premeditated plan on the part of Destiny. Destiny, therefore, may only be defined as the sum total of one’s accumulated experiences, which are themselves accidental and purposeless. ‘Purpose,’ you deduce from this, is an interpretation imposed upon a sequence of events after the fact.”

Lin Carter book The Wizard of Zao

Source: The Wizard of Zao (1978), Chapter 4 (p. 50)

Life , Bird , Chance , Parting

“There’s no disputing the fact that I am politically conservative. But, ultimately, the question here is about fact patterns. Before the book was released, I took it to the investigative units at the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News and Fox News. They independently verified large portions of the book on important narratives. As to the book itself, there are seven or eight minor revisions made. The reader is either going to conclude the Clintons operate in a parallel universe that is just filled with amazing coincidences, or, like lots of politicians, they have recognized that official power is a means to self-enrichment, and they have done it on steroids in a way no other political figure has in modern American political history.”

Peter Schweizer (1964) American writer

The Interview: Author Peter Schweizer on the Clintons’ wealth http://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/the-interview-author-peter-schweizer-on-the-clintons-wealth/ (June 15, 2015)

Books , Way , History , Question

“The appropriate emotion is shame — shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The "working poor," as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Evaluation (p. 221)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001)

Life , Children , Health , Home

““There’s something else, Mr. Muzzlehatch.”
“I’m sure there is. In fact there is everything else.””

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 47 (p. 893)

“In Christ's word there is both Christ's doctrine and Christ's heart, — the fact which He announces, and the feeling with which He proclaims it; and in order to be really Biblical, in order to be completely Christian, we must unite the two. If a man wants either, just to that extent Christ's word does not dwell in him.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 91.

Feeling , Heart , Christ

“My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance.”

Philip Warren Anderson (1923) American physicist

[New York Times, 2005-01-04, God (or Not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take a Leap, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5090&en=ce9bddb9581db4d9&ex=1262581200&partner=rssuserland, 2006-08-22]
Anderson was describing his dislike for "string theory".

Fashion , Science

“Our patients are the ones who express and live out the subconscious and unconscious tendencies in the culture. The neurotic, or person suffering from what we now call character disorder, is characterized by the fact that the usual defenses of the culture do not work for him — a generally painful situation of which he is more or less aware…”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 20

Pain , Suffering , Personality

“Aristotle found support for his thesis in facts drawn from geopolitics or ‘natural law’. Greek superiority had to be proved demonstrably innate, a gift of nature. In one celebrated fragment he counsels Alexander to be ‘a hegemon [leader] of Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants’.”

Peter Green (1924) British historian

Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography, page 58.

Law , Support , Nature

“The reader may ask why in this book string theory and supersymmetry have not been discussed. … The fact is that this book is about physics and this implies that the theoretical ideas discussed must be supported by experimental facts. Neither supersymmetry and string theory satisfy this criterion. They are figments of the theoretical mind.”

Martinus J. G. Veltman (1931) Dutch physicist

[Martinus Veltman, Facts and mysteries in elementary particle physics, World Scientific, 2003, 981238149X, 308, https://books.google.com/books?id=CNCHDIobj0IC&pg=PA308]

Books , Idea , Support

“The truth [is in his paintings]... When they have a similar structure to and are organized in as truthful a way as nature. When I look out of the window, then truth for me is the way nature shows itself in its various tones, colours and proportions. That's a truth and has its own correctness. This little slice of nature, and in fact any given piece of nature, represents to me an ongoing challenge, and is a model for my paintings.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

In an interview with Christiane Vielhaber, 1986; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1980's

Truth , Way , Nature , Painting

““Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good Old Days?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir—”
“It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 2

Life , Death , Age , Imagination

“The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.”

Samuel Beckett book Molloy

Molloy (1951)

Hope

“I thank and commend the Supreme Court for issuing the TRO and for upholding justice, truth and the fact that Senator Grace Poe is a candidate for President!”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, December 28). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153773901445610/
2015, Facebook

Truth , Justice

“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book II, Ch. 7
My Antonia (1918)

Life , Men , Winter , Weather

“The record of the race, hitherto accepted as the truth about ourselves, has been the story of facts and conditions as the male saw them – or wished to see them.... No secret has been so well-kept as the secret of what women have thought about life.”

Elizabeth Bisland Whetmore (1861–1929) American writer and journalist

On men and women, A Candle of Understanding.

Life , Women , Truth , Secret

“The fact is that building a pyramid is fairly easy, aside from the lifting. You just pile up stones in receding layers, placing one layer carefully upon another, and pretty soon you have a pyramid. You can't help it. In other words, it is not in the nature of a pyramid to fall down.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Footnote: It probably could not fall down if it tried.
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

Nature , Help

“The excellent work of Tropfke is an example of the tendency to break away from the mere chronological recital of facts.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

History of Mathematics (1923) Vol.1

“After writing the account given of the Savior’s ministry to the remnant of the seed of Jacob, upon this continent, it was easy to be seen, as the prophet said it would be, that darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the minds of the people. On reflecting further it was as easy to be seen that amid the great strife and noise concerning religion, none had authority from God to administer the ordinances of the Gospel. For the question might be asked, have men authority to administer in the name of Christ, who deny revelations, when His testimony is no less than the spirit of prophecy, and His religion based, built, and sustained by immediate revelations, in all ages of the world when He has had a people on earth? If these facts were buried, and carefully concealed by men whose craft would have been in danger if once permitted to shine in the faces of men, they were no longer to us; and we only waited for the commandment to be given ‘Arise and be baptized.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Men , God , People , Age

“They were both more than twenty-seven in those enthusiastic years of nineteen hundred and thirty-five, yet neither had as much as ever kissed a girl. Not that kissing was much in favour in that district. Reading about lovers kissing, Tarry often reflected on the fact that he had never seen anyone kissing anyone, except poor old Peter Toole whom he once saw kissing a corpse in a wakehouse in the hope of getting a couple of glasses of whiskey.”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) poet

p11
Prose, Tarry Flynn (1948)

Hope , Girl , Lovers , Kiss

“Hector had always been known as a great shoemaker. In fact, customers from such far-off places as France claimed that Hector made the best shoes in the world. Yet for years, he had been frustrated with his small shoemaking business. Although Hector knew he was capable of making hundreds of shoes per week, he was averaging just 30 pairs. When a friend asked him why, Hector explained that while he was great at producing shoes, he was a poor salesman -- and terrible when it came to collecting payments. Yet he spent most of his time working in these areas of weakness.
So, Hector's friend introduced him to Sergio, a natural salesman and marketer. Just as Hector was known for his craftsmanship, Sergio could close deals and sell. Given the way their strengths complemented one another, Hector and Sergio decided to work together. A year later, this strengths-based duo was producing, selling, and collecting payment for more than 100 pairs of shoes per week -- a more than threefold increase.
While this story may seem simplistic, in many cases, aligning yourself with the right task can be this easy. When we're able to put most of our energy into developing our natural talents, extraordinary room for growth exists. So, a revision to the "You-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be" maxim might be more accurate.”

Tom Rath (1975) American author

StrengthsFinder 2.0, 2007
Source: Tom Rath, "The Fallacy Behind the American Dream," Business Journal, Feb. 8, 2007 (Excerpted from StrengthsFinder 2.0)

World , Shoe , Way , Business

“Back in the day Japanese games were used to winning and were used to success. We celebrated all sorts of victories. However at some point these winners became losers. Not accepting that fact has led to the tragic state of Japanese games today.”

Keiji Inafune (1965) Japanese video game designer

Source: "Mega Man creator laments" https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-08-mega-man-creator-laments-tragic-state-of-japanese-games-industry. Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 2018-07-15.

Game , Success , Victory

“A great surgeon performs operations for stone by a single method; later he makes a statistical summary of deaths and recoveries, and he concludes from these statistics that the mortality law for this operation is two out of five. Well, I say that this ratio means literally nothing scientifically and gives us no certainty in performing the next operation; for we do not know whether the next case will be among the recoveries or the deaths. What really should be done, instead of gathering facts empirically, is to study them more accurately, each in its special determinism…. to discover in them the cause of mortal accidents so as to master the cause and avoid the accidents.”

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) French physiologist

Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)

Death , Law , Study

“What you want is protection. You want to be safe. What the government does is to try to retaliate after the fact.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Rampart Institute (Society for Libertarian Life edition), speech from 1978, p. 14.
Does Government Protection Protect (1979)

“It is because simplicity and vastness are both beautiful that we seek by preference simple facts and vast facts; that we take delight, now in following the giant courses of the stars, now in scrutinizing the microscope that prodigious smallness which is also a vastness, and now in seeking in geological ages the traces of a past that attracts us because of its remoteness.”

Henri Poincaré book Science and Method

C’est parce que la simplicité, parce que la grandeur est belle, que nous rechercherons de préférence les faits simples et les faits grandioses, que nous nous complairons tantôt à suivre la course gigantesque des astres, tantôt à scruter avec le microscope cette prodigieuse petitesse qui est aussi une grandeur, tantôt à rechercher dans les temps géologiques les traces d’un passé qui nous attire parce qu’il est lointain.
Part I. Ch. 1 : The Selection of Facts, p. 23
Science and Method (1908)

Age , Beauty , Star , Past

“I think almost everyone, including me, thought the election of our first black president would lead to new efforts to improve the dismal economic condition of African-Americans. In fact, Obama has seldom touched on the issue of race, and when he has he has emphasized the conservative themes of responsibility and self-help. Even when Republicans have suppressed minority voting, in a grotesque campaign to fight nonexistent voter fraud, Obama has said and done nothing.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

2010s, Obama is a Republican (2014)

Fraud , Thinking , Effort , Help

“In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information nor to the statistical objectivity of the facts.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

from "Cardinal Ratzinger Sees a Media Campaign Against Church," Zenit.org, December 3, 2002
2002

“To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer, in his "The Meaning of Life", collected in The Meaning of Life, and Other Essays (1990).
Misattributed

“The character of the artist has to be responsive and lucky. Personally I have never been interested in a defensible reason post card for working achievement functionally is a delusion. To do a needed work short changes art. It seems to me that a great part Indian moccasins of urgency in working lies in the fact that one acts freely friends and associates may become more closely allied with you real soon.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Quote from 'Note on Painting', Robert Rauschenberg, in Pop Art Redefined, October/November 1963, J. Rusell and Suzi Gablik, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1969
1960's

Art , Change , Parting , Personality

“Be sure of the fact before you lose time in searching for a cause.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Search , Time

“Such abstruse ideas are totally alien to Chopin. The Romantic interweaving of music and literature that was characteristic of Schumann and Liszt was a negligible source of inspiration. Schumann dedicated Kreisleriana to Chopin, but in fact Chopin’s consciousness for classical strength and form had nothing in common with the exalted, torn, eccentric and confused character of the work.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Music , Literature , Idea

“We know all those facts about Florida and what Katherine Harris did, and the private firm that took African-Americans off the voting rolls and prohibited them from voting. But I've been surprised in this first week how many average Americans were not aware of all of the trickery and deceit that took place in the year before the election to fix it for George W. Bush.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

"BuzzFlash Interviews Michael Moore" (13 March 2002)
2002

“I am not afraid to lose because politics is not the air I'm breathing. In fact, I long for the day when I'm no longer in politics and will live a quiet and less complicated life - I won't use the word simple because I'm living a simple life now.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Kap Maceda Aguila, "The Substance of Chiz", People Asia, 2006 June, p. 51, ISSN 0119-657X.
2006

Life

“Luther could not be ignorant of this mediaeval version. He made judicious use of it, as he did also of old German and Latin hymns. Without such aid he could hardly have finished his New Testament in the short space of three months. But this fact does not diminish his merit in the least; for his version was made from the original Hebrew and Greek, and was so far superior in every respect that the older version entirely disappeared. It is to all intents a new work.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

German versions of the Bible that preceded the Luther Bible
Source: Luther's use of the older German version was formerly ignored or denied, but has been proved by Professor Krafft of Bonn (1883).

“The ideas that the colonists put forward, rather than creating a new condition of fact, expressed one that has long existed; they articulated and in so doing generalized, systematized, gave moral sanction to what had emerged haphazardly, incompletely and insensibly, from the chaotic factionalism of colonial politics.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 162.

Idea

“I certainly do have this feeling of affection for the absolute sense of intellectual freedom that exists as a live nerve, a live wire, right through the center of American life. … Every time I get totally discouraged with this country, I remind myself, "No, the fact is that finally we can really say what we think, and some extraordinary things have come out of that."”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Interview for French TV (1998)

Life , Feeling , Thinking , Sense

“Writers after Coase have referred to the authority structure of the firm as a "visible hand" that works in combination with Smith's invisible hand. The everyday fact that employers exercise power over their employees — not news to most employees — had been a central theme in Marx's economics, but it was (and generally continues to be) overlooked by most neoclassical economists. Early in his studies Coase noted the similarity between the hierarchical organization of capitalist firms, with their reliance on command relations, and the then-existing system of centralized economic planning in the Communist countries, where production was carried out in accordance with orders from higher authorities and where market competition played little role.”

Samuel Bowles (1939) American economist

Source: Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change, 2005, p. 85

Exercises , Study , Country

“It is a fact that humans are multicellular eukaryotes with an internal digestive tract. It is also a fact that these criteria match the biological definition of an animal. But because I’m talking to a philosopher, we even have to argue the definition of “definition”. “A good definition explains concisely what something means“, “a statement expressing the essential nature of something“, “a statement of what a thing is“. So any multicellular eukaryote with an internal digestive tract is in fact an animal by definition. Once we determine that the criteria apply, we have no choice to deny the definition connected with that, especially not when the definition is deliberately well-established by expertise as this one is, rather than being an “accident of language” such as the apologist asserted.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Philosophistry http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/04/12/philosophistry/ (April 12, 2017)

Nature , Animals

“Systems science and technology constitute one aspect of systems thinking, but the humanities and arts make up the other. The fact that design plays such a large part in the systemic treatment of problems makes it apparent that art has a major role in it as well. Ethics and aesthetics are integral aspects of evaluating systems… the systems approach involves the pursuit of truth (science) and its effective use (technology), plenty (economics), the good (ethics and morality), and beauty and fun (aesthetics). To compare systems methodology with that of any of the so-called ‘hard’ disciplines—for example, physics—is to misunderstand the nature of systems. The worry is not that the systems approach is not scientific in the sense which physics or chemistry or biology is, but that some try to make it scientific in that sense. To the extent they succeed, they destroy it.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Ackoff (1999). "Disciplines, the two cultures and the scianities". Systems Research and Behavioral Science. 16 (6), p. 537. Cited in: Sherryl Stalinski (2005) A Systems View of Social Systems, Culture and Communities. Saybrook Graduate School. p. 5.
1990s

Truth , Beauty , Art , Nature

“In fact the wives of the patriarchs, all untruthful, and one a kleptomaniac, but illustrate the law, that the cardinal virtues are seldom found in oppressed classes.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton book The Woman's Bible

The Woman's Bible (1898)

Law

“The thing about herbs is that there is nothing supernatural or implausible about the fact that any particular herb can have a medicinal effect. But the truth of the matter is that herbs are drugs. There's nothing magical about them. The fact that they are "natural" is irrelevant — it's meaningless. They are drugs. They are drugs that have not been purified, identified, … and quantified. … Probably for most plants … there are hundreds of chemicals in there with varying degrees of potency.”

Steven Novella (1964) American neurologist, skepticist

SGU, Podcast #78 – January 15th, 2007 http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/78
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, Podcast, 2000s

Truth , Nature

“I'll never be bothered if I don't have a hit because you look at the songs that are hits and they're none of my favourites. Just the fact that we do have fans waiting here, that's exciting enough.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Stephen Downie (May 20, 2005) "Second coming", The Courier-Mail, News Limited, p. 51.

Waiting

“I had been warned about Mr. Truman's quick and violent temper and prejudices, but he radiated nothing but courtesy and good humor during our meeting. He has an engaging personality, a quick and witty tongue, and I liked him from the start. At the conference itself, he seemed to take great pride in his historical knowledge, but, it seemed to me that in spite of his having read much, it was of a superficial character, encompassing facts without the logic and reasoning dictating those facts. Of the Far East he knew little, presenting a strange combination of distorted history and vague hopes that somehow, some way, we could do something to help those struggling against Communism.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. 361

Hope , Way , History , Communication

“In modern science, in fact, let alone modern systems theory, cause disappears wherever you have a very complex system of interrelated elements.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Walter F. Buckley (1970) in: Cry California. Vol 6. p. 28.

Science

“Since most subjects studied in school consist largely of theories… language education must include not only the serious study of what truth and falsehood mean in the context of a subject, but also what is meant by a fact, an inference, an assumption, a judgment, a generalization… In this way students will be learning both the language of a subject and the methods of inquiry in that subject, since inquiry consists of nothing else but the generation of questions, the invention of definitions and metaphors, the separation of facts from inferences, the forming of generalizations…”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)

Truth , Education , School , Way

“In 5,000 years of recorded human history… neither in the east or in the west… has any society ever defined marriage as anything other than between men and women. Not one in 5000 years of recorded human history. That's an astounding fact and it isn't until the last 12 years or so that we have seen for the first time in recorded human history marriage defined as anything other than between men and between women.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Kasie
Hunt
Michele Bachmann burns up Iowa, decries gay marriage
Politico
2011-04-11
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/52946.html
2011-04-15
2010s

Women , Men , Marriage , History

“The marvelous is of necessity a lie, a distortion. At best it is a metaphor which leads to the truth. I think that I know what causes the World’s Pain, lady. Or at least I think I know what contributes to that Pain.”
“And what would that be, Ulrich von Bek?”
“By telling a single lie to oneself or to another, by denying a single fact of the world as it has been created, one adds to the World’s Pain. And pain, lady, creates pain. And one must not seek to become saint or sinner, God or Devil. One must seek to become human and to love the fact of one’s humanity.”
I became embarrassed. “That is all I have learned, lady.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“It is all that Heaven demands,” she said.
Source: The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 16 (p. 158)

Love , God , Pain , Truth

“The reason no one has yet been able to come up with a good word to describe the homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer, etc.) is because he does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Sex Is Politics" (1979).
1980s, The Second American Revolution (1983)

Sex , Nature

“The ideologies of the super-tribes exercised absolute power over all individual minds under their sway.
In civilized regions the super-tribes and the overgrown natural tribes created an astounding mental tyranny. In relation to his natural tribe, at least if it was small and genuinely civilized, the individual might still behave with intelligence and imagination. Along with his actual tribal kinsmen he might support a degree of true community unknown on Earth. He might in fact be a critical, self-respecting and other-respecting person. But in all matters connected with the super-tribes, whether national or economic, he behaved in a very different manner. All ideas coming to him with the sanction of nation or class would be accepted uncritically and with fervor by himself and all his fellows. As soon as he encountered one of the symbols or slogans of his super-tribe he ceased to be a human personality and became a sort of de-cerebrate animal, capable only of stereotyped reactions. In extreme cases his mind was absolutely closed to influences opposed to the suggestion of the super-tribe. Criticism was either met with blind rage or actually not heard at all. Persons who in the intimate community of their small native tribe were capable of great mutual insight and sympathy might suddenly, in response to tribal symbols, be transformed into vessels of crazy intolerance and hate directed against national or class enemies. In this mood they would go to any extreme of self-sacrifice for the supposed glory of the super-tribe. Also they would show great ingenuity in contriving means to exercise their lustful vindictiveness upon enemies who in favorable circumstances could be quite as kindly and intelligent as themselves.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter V: Worlds Innumerable; 2. Strange Mankinds (p. 62)

Hate , Exercises , Imagination , Intelligence

“Another indication of the magnitude of the present transition is the fact that, as far as many statistical series related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, The meaning of the twentieth century: the great transition, 1964, p. 7

History , Memory , Parting

“Bare Attention first allows things to speak for themselves, without interruption by final verdicts pronounced too hastily. Bare Attention gives them a chance to finish their speaking, and one will thus get to learn that, in fact, they have much to say about themselves, which formerly was mostly ignored by rashness or was drowned in the inner and outer noise in which ordinary man normally lives. Because Bare Attention sees things without the narrowing and leveling effect of habitual judgments, it sees them ever anew, as it for the first time; therefore it will happen with progressive frequency that things will have something new and worthwhile to reveal. Patient pausing in such an attitude of Bare Attention will open wide horizons to one’s understanding, denied to the strained efforts of an impatient intellect. Owing to a rash or habitual limiting, labeling, misjudging, and mishandling of things, important sources of knowledge often remain closed.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 35

Understanding , Knowledge , Effort , Learning

“Concerning the night assault of Lord Asano's ronin, the fact that they did not commit seppuku at the Sengakuji was an error, for there was a long delay between the time their lord was struck down and the time when they struck down the enemy. If Lord Kira had died of illness within that period, it would have been extremely regrettable.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Commentary on the tale of The Forty-Seven Samurai (or the "Forty-seven Ronin", or Akō Rōshi, the Akō "vendetta"), emphasizing his view that Bushido demands prompt action, and not delay, or concern about success and failure. Variant: "What if, nine months after Asano's death, Kira had died of an illness?"
Hagakure (c. 1716)

Error , Time , Night

“I think that everybody tries to produce what Marshall McLuhan called a ‘counter environment.’ That is, you set yourself in opposition to the kind of mass tendencies which the media set up. That’s what’s so important about the humanities in the university…There’s something of a personal dialogue between one human being and another. And the fact that this dialogue is being carried out in the teeth of all the mass emotion techniques of the electronic media is a very important side of the humanities.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Canadian Energy: Dialogues on Creativity: Northrop Frye." Descant 12, no. 32-3 (1981).
"Quotes", Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008)

Thinking , Personality

“As Nozick acknowledges, a modern state should not feel morally constrained by property holdings which might have had a Lockean pedigree but in fact do not. In this regard it is interesting that one of the main uses of Lockean theory these days is in defending the property rights of indigenous people—where a literal claim is being made about who had first possession of a set of resources and about the need to rectify the injustices that accompanied their subsequent expropriation.”

Jeremy Waldron (1953) American lawyer

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – "Property and Ownership" http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/

People , Feeling

“There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. The sternest comment that can be made against employers as a class lies in the fact that men of Ability usually succeed in showing their worth in spite of their employer, and not with his assistance and encouragement.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

The Philistine magazine, August 1901 http://books.google.com/books?id=xxI8AQAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+something+that+is+much+more+scarce+something+finer+far+something+rarer+than+ability+It+is+the+ability+to+recognize+ability+The+sternest+comment+that+can+be+made+against+employers+as+a+class+lies+in+the+fact+that+men+of+Ability+usually+succeed+in+showing+their+worth+in+spite+of+their+employer+and+not+with+his+assistance+and+encouragement%22&pg=PA87#v=onepage
"The Crying Need", in A Message to Garcia, and Thirteen Other Things (1901), p. 163 http://books.google.com/books?id=iSo3AAAAIAAJ&q=%22There+is+something+that+is+much+more+scarce+something+finer+far+something+rarer+than+ability+It+is+the+ability+to+recognize+ability+The+sternest+comment+that+can+be+made+against+employers+as+a+class+lies+in+the+fact+that+men+of+Ability+usually+succeed+in+showing+their+worth+in+spite+of+their+employer+and+not+with+his+assistance+and+encouragement%22&pg=PA163#v=onepage

Men