Quotes about fact
page 74

“I am not slow to claim the name of Scotchman, and undoubtedly, even if I were slow to claim it, there is the fact staring me in the face that not a drop of blood runs in my veins except what is derived from a Scottish ancestry.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Dundee (29 October 1890), quoted in The Times (30 october 1890), p. 4
1890s

Swati Maliwal (1984) women activist who fights for women rights

Zee News https://zeenews.india.com/delhi/dcw-chief-swati-maliwal-asks-delhi-lg-anil-baijal-to-fast-track-two-delhi-rape-cases-ensure-death-penalty-for-accused-2308623.html, accessed May 9, 2021

Women, Fear, Law, Girl

“It is now an established fact that there is a complete lack of fear of law in the minds of criminals and instead the laxity of the system emboldens them to commit gruesome crimes against women and girls in the country. The justice delivery mechanism in the country is painfully long and cumbersome which more often than not breaks the spirit of the girl or woman who has been raped,”

Swati Maliwal (1984) women activist who fights for women rights

Zee News https://zeenews.india.com/delhi/dcw-chief-swati-maliwal-asks-delhi-lg-anil-baijal-to-fast-track-two-delhi-rape-cases-ensure-death-penalty-for-accused-2308623.html, accessed May 9, 2021

Women, Fear, Justice, Law

“The national character of the three kingdoms was strongly marked in my army. I found the English regiments always in the best humour when we were well supplied with beef; the Irish when we were in the wine countries, and the Scotch when the dollars for pay came up. This looks like an epigram, but I assure you it was a fact, and quite perceptible; but we managed to reconcile all their tempers, and I will venture to say that in our later campaigns, and especially when we crossed the Pyrenees, there never was an army in the world in better spirits, better order, or better discipline. We had mended in discipline every campaign, until at last (smiling) I hope we were pretty near perfect.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman

Remarks to John Wilson Croker (20 October 1825), quoted in L. J. Jennings (ed.), The Croker Papers: The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830, Vol. I (1884), p. 353

World, Smile, Hope, Wine

“One of the most important axioms is, that as the quantity of any commodity, for instance, plain food, which a man has to consume, increases, so the utility or benefit derived from the last portion used decreases in degree. The decrease in enjoyment between the beginning and the end of a meal may be taken as an example. And I assume that on an average, the ratio of utility is some continuous mathematical function of the quantity of commodity. This law of utility has, in fact, always been assumed by political economists under the more complex form and name of the Law of Supply and Demand. But once fairly stated in its simple form, it opens up the whole of the subject.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Letter to his brother (1 June 1860), published in Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons (1886), edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife, p. 151. https://archive.org/details/cu31924074297254/page/n168/mode/1up

Law, Food, Mathematics

“The stories, they get misconstrued as the facts aren’t really facts and the fictions aren’t really fictions. Sometimes, the people telling the stories aren’t who they appear to be. Sometimes, the voices sound the same and you never really know where they’re coming from. And sometimes, the same person just keeps telling the same story, over and over until he’s sick in the head.”

Jason Tanamor (1975) Filipino-American Author and Writer

Source: Novels, Anonymous (2013), Chapter 19

People, Appearance, Personality

“In a history book, you can't imagine, you can't speculate, you can't conjure new worlds because that would ruin the history book. .... And in a novel you can't have too much fact-dumping, too much history, it just doesn't work, too much footnoting, again that ruins the story. So I love the fact that I can do speculation and imagination in one and go wild in a novel and then do proper, scrupulous research in the other. I think they compliment each other.”

Kate Williams (historian) (1974) British historian

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-17945784
Meet the Author: Kate Williams
BBC
3 May 2012
2 May 2021

Love, Books, World, Making love

“The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (2017), p. 343

“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Wisdom, Knowledge, Time

“If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Wisdom, Knowledge, Sense

“The fact is, with every friendship you make, and every bond of trust you establish, you are shaping the image of America projected to the rest of the world. That is so important. So when you study abroad, you're actually helping to make America stronger.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Friendship, World, Study, Help

“The Universal Zulu Nation stands to acknowledge wisdom, understanding, freedom, justice, and equality, peace, unity, love, and having fun, work, overcoming the negative through the positive, science, mathematics, faith, facts, and the wonders of God, whether we call him Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, or Jah.”

Afrika Bambaataa (1957) American DJ, record producer and activist

Love, Wisdom, God, Peace

“Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

“The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute, and consequently in the integrality and depth of this consciousness; having lost sight of it by plunging himself into the world of phenomena viewed as such, man needs to be reminded of it by the celestial Message. This Message comes finally from "himself", not of course from his empirical "I" but from his immanent Selfhood, which is that of God and without which there would be no "I", whether human, angelic or other; the credibility of the Message results from the fact that it is what we are, both within ourselves and beyond ourselves. In the depths of transcendence is immanence, and in the depths of immanence, transcendence.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 127-128, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Miscellaneous, Revelation

God, World, Angels

“The fact that I can tell stories not only by writing them but also by living them through a character and therefore giving the public emotions (possibly positive), which is the ultimate goal of entertainment.”

Isabelle Adriani (1972) Italian actress, journalist, singer, and writer

Italians in the World. Isabelle Adriani, perfect balance between life and fairy tale. https://www.tesoriditaliamagazine.it/italians-in-the-world-isabelle-adriani-perfect-balance-between-life-and-fairy-tale (5 June 2020)

“With all this dolling up and featuring of the news,it's getting harder and harder just to get the facts of the story.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

Free the Airwaves! (2002)

“You can recognize a really good idea by the fact that its implementation seems impossible in the first place.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Google shows that the internet often attributes this statement to Einstein, but never with a source. It does not occur in any book in Google Books.
Misattributed

Idea

“The undramatic fact is that I just think and think and think until I have something [for a story], and there is nothing marvelous or artistic about the phenomenon.”

Isaac Asimov book In Memory Yet Green

In Memory Yet Green (1979), pp. 301–302
General sources

Thinking

“I’m not a politician, even though I play-act one when the boss tells me to—I’m allowed to change my mind when my understanding of the facts changes.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Labyrinth Index (2018), Chapter 10, “Flight Plan” (p. 301)

Understanding, Change

“You cannot wage war with sentimentality. The more ruthlessly war is conducted, the more merciful is it in fact, for it finishes the war the sooner.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

Remark (November 1914), Paul Dehn, Hindenburg, als Erzieher (1918), p. 12, quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 74
Supreme Commander of All German Forces in the East

War

“The rhythm of music, akin to the human heart-beat and to the ceaseless change and motion, which is the basic fact in all life, apeals at once to our own physical vitality.”

Walter Raymond Spalding (1865–1962) American music pedagogue and author

Page 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=pQARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA3. Music: An Art and a Language (1920), Preliminary Considerations (Ch. I)

Life, Music, Change, Heart

“It is arguable that a closer contact between ethics and economics can be beneficial not only to economics but even to ethics. Many ethical problems have what we have been calling 'engineering' aspects, and some of them do, in fact, involve economic relations.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Chap. 3 : Freedom and Consequences
1990s, On Ethics and Economics (1991)

Problem

“Although there is a perception that the wearing of facemasks may be beneficial, there is in fact very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use outside of these clinical setting.”

Jake Dunning researcher

Jake Dunning (2020) cited in " Wuhan coronavirus: face masks 'do nothing' - virologist https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/408255/wuhan-coronavirus-face-masks-do-nothing-virologist" on RNZ, 27 January 2020.

“You try to cope with the mass audience, but in fact you are not doing something for them—I would be fighting with myself. I thought, I don’t have to make big films, I can make small films that I can be happy with. I can find my own audience.”

Wong Kar-wai (1958) Hong Kong screenwriter, film producer and film director

"Wong Kar-wai by Han Ong" in Bomb Magazine (1 Janaury 1998) https://bombmagazine.org/articles/wong-kar-wai-1/

Happiness, Fight

“We as a society have become very independent, and we have become proficient in so many things, I think some of us feel we don't have that reliance on God as much as it was once felt. But the fact is we need (God) more than ever.”

Anthony F. Tonnos (1935) Canadian Catholic bishop

Bishop Tonnos retires after almost three decades of service https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2010/11/08/bishop-tonnos-retires-after-almost-three-decades-of-service.html (November 8, 2010)

God, Feeling, Thinking

“The fact that Allah has blessed you to witness another Ramadan is proof that Allah wants to see you in His VIP list to enter Jannah.”

Yasir Qadhi (1975) Pakistani-American preacher and imam

“It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and importance of sex.”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), The Traffic in Women

Sex

“Theories were a dime a dozen. The partition that separated science and wishful thinking was evidence: observations and firm facts.”

Charles Sheffield book Convergence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 317)

Thinking, Science

“This was a strictly a one-nighter
to delight us
we both knew this must stay quiet
It was vital
we couldn't forget though
We never let go we just held on tighter
See I'm a lover not a fighter
so I didn't fight the fact that I more than liked you”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"One Night" (song). Based on "Heartbeats" by José González (originally "The Knife") ("One Night" on YouTube (with lyrics) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4V0oIquNZQ, feat. José González) Remix albums, We Didn't Invent the Remix (2007)

Lovers, Fight, Forgetting

“Here too, we can see that not being open to learning something new does not automatically make someone a narcissist. In fact, a narcissist is required to be more knowledgeable in many fields; mostly in psychology.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Knowledge, Learning

“However, the fact that we must love our parents cannot limit us from observing and identifying their daily behaviours; both negative and positive.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love, Parent

“Science is not meant to base its teachings on memorisation of facts, but exploration and selfexperiencing everything in life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Science

“Seduction like attraction, is spoken about in a more positive manner in our generation. Forgetting the fact that these attributes involve bending the will of another person in order to make our ends meet our means.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Personality, Forgetting

“Self-realisation is the highest knowledge you can ever seek into your life—The rest are simply facts.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Knowledge

“The fact that you came from a very beautiful worm demonstrate that, evolution is more romantic than scientific. Thus, it arouses the mind rather than illuminating it.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Beauty

“All the facts are so stubborn. They don't accept change. It is reaching the level of the ignorant or pretending to know everything.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Change

“Scientific experiences and practices can easily lead to spirituality, rather than trying to memorize more facts.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The fact that Jesus died for your sins is actually encouraging the criminals to do whatever they want.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The fact that you can only find the monuments of Jesus next to the church shows how the state has separated itself from religion.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Religion

“The facts are only beneficial for survival in bodily wandering. Apart from that, you are left on your own.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The list of genocides committed on Earth are endless, the fact that we never learned or know about them does not mean they did not exist.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Learning

“Life for refugees is not easy, that fact should be told.”

Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel (1948) Ethiopian Catholic Archbishop of Addis Abeba

Ethiopian Cardinal Explains the Hard Realities Facing Many African Youth https://www.ncregister.com/blog/ethiopian-cardinal-explains-the-hard-realities-facing-many-african-youth (October 18, 2018)

Life

“Happiness is religion and character; faith and virtue. It is a fact that man cannot find happiness within his own limits; his very nature condemns him to surpass himself, and in surpassing himself, to free himself.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2003, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, World Wisdom, 220, 978-0-94153227-3]
Spiritual life, Happiness

Happiness, Faith, Religion, Nature

“The fact that spiritual realism, or faith, pertains to the intelligence of the heart and not to that of the mind, enables one to understand that in spirituality, the moral qualification takes precedence over the intellectual qualification, and by far.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 71, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Spiritual life, Faith

Faith, Intelligence, Understanding, Heart

“I oppose modem capitalism because by its very nature it cannot and will not function for the common good. In fact, it is a detriment to civilization.”

Charles Coughlin (1891–1979) Catholic priest, radio commentator

As quoted in “Charles Coughlin, 30's ‘Radio Priest,’” Albin Krebsoct, New York Times, Oct. 28, 1979. https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/28/archives/charles-coughlin-30s-radio-priest-dies-fiery-sermons-stirred-furor.html

Nature

“The main reason for choosing a project is not really the renown of the director that's making the project. I feel like it's the fact of an actor to constantly want to do different things.”

Song Kang-ho (1967) South Korean actor

As quoted in "Song Kang Ho and Ko Asung Talk SNOWPIERCER, Working with Director Bong Joon Ho, Reuniting to Play Father and Daughter & Working with Hollywood Stars" in Collider (28 June 2014) https://collider.com/song-kang-ho-ko-asung-snowpiercer-interview/

Feeling

“It underscores yet again the fact that what we call personality is to a considerable degree a question of brain chemistry.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 11 “Personality” (p. 172)

Question, Personality

“Socialism is founded on a lie -- the premise that man knows more than he in fact does know.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

Leonard Read Journals, September 18, 1959 https://history.fee.org/leonard-read-journal/1959/leonard-e-read-journal-september-1959

Lie

“Most people are too indifferent or lazy to acquire facts with which to think accurately. They prefer to act on "opinions" created by guesswork or snap-judgments.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Think and Grow Rich (1938) p.88

People, Thinking, Indifference

“A warrior must learn to make every act count, since he is going to be here in this world for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Journey to Ixtlan" (Chapter 8)

World, Learning

“Pure Christianity—the Christianity of the catacombs—is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: 14 December 1941, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944

Heart

“In fact, I don't even call myself an actor. I'm a reactor. I listen to what to what the other guys says and I react to it.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Source: Speaking in 1958 with Charles Hamblett; as quoted in The Hollywood Cage (1969) by Hamblett, reproduced in "The Hollywood Cage': Wayne Has Method, Goldwyn Has Hope, Welles Has Wasteland" by Hamblett, The Philadelphia Inquirer (May 4, 1969), p. 109
Context: That's the John Wayne method.

Guy

“What should be important is the fact that you are the best man or woman for the job and if you are you should be appointed.”

Beatrice Mtetwa (1957) Zimbabwean human rights lawyer

Source: Beatrice Mtetwa: In Conversation with Trevor https://kubatana.net/2019/11/05/beatrice-mtetwa-in-conversation-with-trevor/

“Just the fact that so many people around the world are showing their interest puts me in a good mood.”

HoYeon Jung (1994) South Korean model, actress

Source: "‘Squid Game’ star HoYeon Jung gains a whopping 15M Instagram followers" in New York Post https://nypost.com/2021/10/07/squid-game-star-hoyeon-jung-gains-huge-15m-instagram-followers/ (7 October 2021)

People, World, Mood

“I forgot, over and over, that the fact of my wanting something wasn’t enough to make it happen.”

Curtis Sittenfeld book Prep

Source: Prep (2005), p. 325

“The second element in the framework of our design must be the realization of universal unity. This fact is only just beginning to permeate into men’s consciousness.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter II Planning a Model World

Men, Universe

“Whatever possibilities and potentialities are latent today, the fact remains that the last word and the final decision will rest with us — the people.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter I, Secrets Behind History

People, Decision

“The fact is that political stupidity is a special kind of stupidity, not well correlated with intelligence, or with other varieties of stupidity.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Source: Derb Quotes https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/derb-quotes-john-derbyshire/, National Review, November 20, 2003.

Stupidity, Intelligence

“Stereotypes are, in fact, merely one aspect of the mind’s ability to make generalizations, without which science and mathematics, not to mention much of everyday life, would be impossible.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Source: Derb Quotes https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/derb-quotes-john-derbyshire/, National Review, November 20, 2003.

Life, Mathematics, Science

“Morality after the fact is worse than no morality at all.”

Robert Silverberg book The Book of Skulls

Source: The Book of Skulls (1972), Chapter 7 (p. 25)

“What mires me in pessimism is the fact that so much of life is pain and sorrow and willful ignorance and violence, and pushing back against that tide takes so much effort, so much steady fight. It’s tiring.”

Jesmyn Ward (1977) American writer

Source: On having a pessimistic nature in “Jesmyn Ward: ‘So much of life is pain and sorrow and wilful ignorance’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/12/jesmyn-ward-sing-unburied-sing-interview-meet-author in The Guardian (2017 Nov 12)

Life, Pain, Effort, Fight

“A being who can look without weeping on the heart-rending facts that fill the cities of our so-called civilisation has a psychology granitic enough to gaze unmoved on a hellful of roasting souls.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Human Attitude Toward Others, p. 45

Soul, Hell, Heart

“In my experience, it is perfectly possible to have opinions and also produce valuable, fact-based information for the world.”

Katherine Maher (1983) chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/krmaher/status/1353456809424547840, (24 January 2021)

World

“There are people who seriously think sea rescue activists like me rescue Black lives because we hate white people. Some white people feel personally threatened by the fact that human rights apply to everyone equally. White priviledge needs to end if we want justice, ever.”

Carola Rackete (1988) German merchant navy captain

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/CaroRackete/status/1276852825432166401 (27 June 2020)

Hate, People, Justice, Feeling

“It’s incumbent upon all people to believe in the facts and to keep pushing it. You can’t constrain free speech, but you can speak more loudly about what is factual.”

Michael McFaul (1963) American academic and diplomat

"An Interview with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul" in LA Times High School Insider https://highschool.latimes.com/carnegie-mellon-university/an-interview-with-former-u-s-ambassador-to-russia-michael-mcfaul/ (30 August 2019)

People

“The fact that we have these fear mongrels. These people that are trying to separate us, and it's just not okay. It's just not okay.”

Jussie Smollett (1982) American actor, singer, director and photographer

14 February 2019 spoken immediately after the preceding sentence which received mass-coverage, this sentence was largely ignored by the media except for a Bean and Biscuits upload https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV36aUwOktQ used by The Unz Report https://www.unz.com/isteve/jussie-speaks-out-against-the-fear-mongrels-trying-to-separate-us/ this was likely because Jussie said "mongrels" when he probably intended to say "mongerers"

People, Fear

“I do not want to speculate on whether certain individuals will be called or not, because corruption is not about speculations or expectations. It is more on facts.”

Mohamad Shukri Abdull (1960) about Mohamad Shukri Abdull

Source: Mohd Shukri Abdull (2019) cited in " Whoever is involved in RM90m claim will be called - MACC https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/463574" on Malaysia Kini, 11 February 2019.

“When we jump to a conclusion before doing research, we tend to look for evidence that supports our beliefs and ignore facts that contradict them. This deprives us of the opportunity to grow our knowledge.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Support, Knowledge

“That the teachings of neither our modern teachers nor preachers are "wisdom from above" is fully demonstrated. It is proved not by any personal incorrectness in their statements or mistakes in life, for "to err is but human," but by incontrovertible facts.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

Source: The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Life, Wisdom, Teachers, Personality

“It’s a sad fact of modern life that if you drive long enough, sooner or later you must leave London behind.”

Ben Aaronovitch book Moon Over Soho

Source: Moon Over Soho (2011), Chapter 1, “Body and Soul” (p. 1)

Life, Sadness

“Dear Mr. President:
It appears proper that I should bring to your notice the fact that the record shows that I shall attain the age of 64 years on November 23rd next- one month from today.
I am as always at your service.
Most sincerely yours,
Ernest J. King
Admiral, U.S. Navy”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Source: Letter from King to Franklin D. Roosevelt on 23 October 1942, notifying the President that King was about to reach mandatory retirement age, at which time he could only be kept in the Navy at the desire of the President. Roosevelt hand-wrote on the same letter "So what, old top? I may even send you a birthday present!" and had it sent back to King. As quoted in Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (1952), by Ernest King and Walter M. Whitehill, p. 412

Age, Appearance, Sincerity

“Philosophy asks for a reason, not just a scientific fact.”

Catherine Rowett (1956) Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia (born 1956)

Source: Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2004), Ch. 1 : Lost words, forgotten worlds

“Mystery is a word with no objective pertinence, merely describing the limitations of a mind. In fact, a mind may be classified by the order of the phenomena it considers mysterious.… The mystery is resolved, the solution made known. “Of course, it is obvious!” comes the chorus. A word about the obvious: it is always obvious.… The common mind transposed the sequence, letting the mystery generate the solution. This is logic in reverse; actually the mystery relates to the solution as the foam relates to the beer.…”

Jack Vance book The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph

The Unspeakable McInch (p. 39; all ellipses in the original)
Short fiction, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

Beer

“Instead of determining the action of life, ends, norms and values are determined by it. This determination consists in the fact that one experiences oneself constantly and knows oneself at every moment. Life also knows at each instant what must be done and what is suited to it. This knowledge is no different from action. It does not precede it or "determine" it, properly speaking. It is identical to it, as the original know-how of life, as praxis and a living body. Action, as we have seen, is only the actualization of the primitive power of this phenomenological body.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Barbarism, Continuum, 2012, p. 96-97
Books on Culture and Barbarism, Barbarism (1987)

Life, Knowledge

“[M]any of the most important Supreme Court decisions take the form of holding that a particular limit either has not been exceeded or, more fundamentally, that the asserted limit is not in fact part of the Constitution at all.”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Soundings and Silences (2016)

Decision, Parting

“Too many people believe that they have to wait until they are wealthy to follow their passion, when in fact, it will be their passion that will make them wealthy.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Future Proofing You (2021)

People, Passion, Waiting

“As the Pacific approaches the Cyclone Season, it is important to consider the fact that this is an important opportunity to further strengthen localise humanitarian action in the Pacific.”

Fiamē Naomi Mata'afa (1957) Samoan politician

Source: Fiamē Naomi Mata'afa (2021) cited in: " Shining a light on NZ's aid sector and its relationship with the Pacific https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/454383/shining-a-light-on-nz-s-aid-sector-and-its-relationship-with-the-pacific" in RNZ, 27 October 2021.

Season

“The fact that you buy our diamonds is by itself an act of commitment to our country- wherever you are, you carry a bit of Botswana with you”

Mokgweetsi Masisi (1962) President of Botswana

Source: https://www.debeersgroup.com/~/media/Files/D/De-Beers-Group-V2/documents/company-news/2019/MEDIA%20RELEASE%20Dr%20Mokgweetsi%20Masisi%20President%20of%20the%20Republic%20of%20Botswana%20opens%20the%20JCK%20Las%20Vegas%20sho.pdf HIS EXCELLENCY, DR MOKGWEETSI MASISI, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF BOTSWANA OPENS JCK LAS VEGAS SHOW, 31 May 2019, Retrieved 14th January 2022

Country

“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children. Nobody survives the seven-lesson curriculum completely unscathed, not even the instructors.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 17

Children, Time

“It is known that very distant nebulae, probably galactic systems like our own, show remarkably high receding velocities whose magnitude increases with the distance. This curious phenomenon promises to provide some important clues for the future development of our cosmological views. It maybe of advantage, therefore, to point out some of the principal facts which any cosmological theory will have to account for. Then a brief discussion will be given of different theoretical suggestions related to the above effect. Finally, a new effect of masses upon light will be suggested which is a sort of gravitational analogue of the Compton effect.”

Fritz Zwicky (1898–1974) Swiss astronomer

Source: Fritz Zwicky, [On the redshift of spectral lines through interstellar space, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 15, 10, 1929, 773–779, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC522555/] (quote from p. 773)

Light, Distant, Future

“A number of abstract ideas, of which we are as a matter of fact unconscious. We do not see them, but we see other things through them.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Source: Speculations (Essays, 1924)

Idea

“People predict by making up stories.
People predict very little and explain everything.
People live under uncertainty whether they like it or not.
People believe they can tell the future if they work hard enough.
People accept any explanation as long as it fits the facts.
The handwriting was on the wall. It was just the ink that was invisible.
People often work hard to obtain information they already have and avoid new knowledge.
Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic Universe. In this match, surprises are expected.
Everything that has already happened must have been inevitable.
A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.
The difference between being very smart and very foolish is often very small.
So many problems occur when people fail to be obedient when they are supposed to be obedient, and fail to be creative when they are supposed to be creative
The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
It is sometimes easier to make the world a better place than to prove you have made the world a better place.”

Amos Tversky (1937–1996) Israeli psychologist

Source: Notes made by Tversky for a scientific paper, c.1972. Michael Lewis. "The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World". Penguin, 2016 (ISBN 9780141983035).

People, Secret, World, Knowledge

“Mass schooling damages children. We don’t need any more of it. And under the guise that it is the same thing as education, it has been picking our pockets just as Socrates predicted it would thousands of years ago. One of the surest ways to recognize real education is by the fact that it doesn’t cost very much, doesn’t depend on expensive toys or gadgets. The experiences that produce it and the Mass schooling that propels it are nearly free. It is hard to turn a dollar on education. But schooling is a wonderful hustle, getting sharper all the time.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 70

Children, Education, School, Way

“No one ever landed on English soil with more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English, and, on this platform, are present English friends who can bear witness to the fact, but the more I lived among them, saw how the machine is working, the English national life, mixed with them, found where the heart-beat of the nation was, the more I loved them. There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do. You have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the philosophy, our national philosophy of the Vedanta, has summarised all misfortune, all misery from that one cause, ignorance, herein also we must understand that the difficulties that arise between us and the English people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they do not know us.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Source: Spoken on his return to India from England, as recorded in From Colombo to Almora (1904), p. 221

Love, Life, People, Understanding

“A time came when the Catholics, having long relied on force, were compelled to appeal to opinion. That which had been defiantly acknowledged and defended required to be ingeniously explained away. The same motive which had justified the murder now prompted the lie. Men shrank from the conviction that the rulers and restorers of their Church had been murderers and abetters of murder, and that so much infamy had been coupled with so much zeal. They feared to say that the most monstrous of crimes had been solemnly approved at Rome, lest they should devote the Papacy to the execration of mankind. A swarm of facts were invented to meet the difficulty: The victims were insignificant in number; they were slain for no reason connected with religion; the Pope believed in the existence of the plot; the plot was a reality; the medal is fictitious; the massacre was a feint concerted with the Protestants themselves; the Pope rejoiced only when he heard that it was over. These things were repeated so often that they have been sometimes believed; and men have fallen into this way of speaking whose sincerity was unimpeachable, and who were not shaken in their religion by the errors or the vices of Popes. Möhler was pre-eminently such a man. In his lectures on the history of the Church, which were published only last year, he said that the Catholics, as such, took no part in the massacre; that no cardinal, bishop, or priest shared in the councils that prepared it; that Charles informed the Pope that a conspiracy had been discovered; and that Gregory made his thanksgiving only because the King's life was saved. Such things will cease to be written when men perceive that truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Source: 1860s, The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew (1869)

Life, Men, Truth, Lie

“Where is a self-revelation of this sort achieved? In Life, as its essence, since Life is nothing other than that which reveals itself – not something that might have an added property of self-revealing, but the very fact of self-revealing, self-revelation as such. Everywhere that something like a self-revelation is produced there is Life. Everywhere there is Life, this self-revelation is produced. If, then, the Revelation of God is a self-revelation that owes nothing to the truth of the world, and if we ask where such a self-revelation is achieved, the answer is unequivocal: in Life and in Life alone. Therefore we are in the presence of the first fundamental equation of Christianity: God is Life – he is the essence of Life, or if one prefers, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what God is, but we do not know it through the effect of some knowledge or learning – we do not know it through thought, against the background of the truth of the world. Rather we know it, and we can know it, only in and through Life itself. We can know the essence of God only in God. But this observation is premature.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 27-28

Life, God, Truth, World

“Although it is not thought or some other form of knowledge, although it is not the truth of the world, that gives access to the Revelation of God, at least a single possibility persist, already mentioned as a simple matter of fact and now rendered unimpeachable. Access to God, understood as his self-revelation according to a phenomenality proper to Him, is not susceptible of being produced except where this self-revelation is produced and in the way self-revelation does so. There where God originally arrives in himself, in the phenomenalization of phenomenality that is his own and is thus like the self-phenomenalization of this phenomenality proper – there alone is access to God. It is not that thought is lacking and so we cannot accede to the Revelation of God. Quite the contrary, it is only when thought defaults, because the truth of the world is absent, that what is at stake be achieved: the self-revelation of God – the self-phenomenalization of pure phenomenality against the background of a phenomenality that is not that of the world.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

God, Truth, World, Way

“Language has become the universal evil. And we can certainly see why. What characterizes any word is its difference from the thing – the fact that, taken in itself, in its own reality, language contains nothing of the reality of the thing, none of its properties. This difference from the thing explains its indifference to the thing. Since a word has nothing in itself that is identical or similar to what is in the thing, it could as well be united with any other thing whatever. One could use the same name for two different things or else attribute several names to the same thing. But because, in and of itself, the word contains nothing that is real and ignores everything about that reality, it could just as well bring reality back to itself, identify with it, define it, in such a way that everything the word says becomes reality, and pretends to stand for it. Emerging from its own powerlessness, the power of language suddenly becomes frightening, shaking up reality, twisting it up in its frenzy.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Way, Reality, Universe, Evil

“In trying to work for you, we might have failed to take good care of your souls as expected. We ask for your forgiveness in this Year of Mercy. We ask a bit a bit of amnesty from you. We should humbly acknowledge before God and his people the fact that in the history of our priesthood, the dark presence of sin is also found, so there is the need for us in this Year of Mercy to commit ourselves fully to the search for holiness.”

Robert Ndlovu (1955) Archbishop of Harare

Source: Archbishop of Harare celebrates Chrism Mass http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2016/03/24/archbishop_of_harare_celebrates_chrism_mass/en-1217797 (24 March 2016)

God, People, Soul, History

“We are all at one stage or another of being unfinished. We can be born with deficiencies, or incur disabilities, some of which last through life. In fact, we are never finished while death is still in front of us. When there is something that cannot be resolved or fulfilled within our present span of life, it helps to remember that our life was not something we had a right to in the first place; it is simply gift. And our present life is not the whole of it.”

Peter Cullinane (1936) Catholic bishop

Unmoored https://nzcatholic.org.nz/2021/08/31/unmoored/ (August 31, 2021)

Life, Death, Help

“Incompatibility in a relationship is not about being different. Many differences are workable and can be easily accommodated in a relationship. In fact, many differences make people in a relationship even more compatible. Incompatibility is the condition of two things being different in a way that is specifically uncomplimentary to the degree that the specific difference makes them incapable of coexisting harmoniously.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Source: tealswan.com/quotes

People, Way

“First things first. Get the facts, then decide what to do next. And hope that there is a next.”

Genevieve Cogman (1972) novelist and game designer

Source: The Mortal Word (2018), Chapter 2 (p. 33)

Hope

“The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell. In fact, that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1997)

Way

“In fact, anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (1997)

“It’s bad enough that you’re plying a trade for which you haven’t the aptitude or integrity, but you could at least check your conclusion against the facts.”

Charles E. Gannon (1960) American novelist

Source: Trial by Fire (2014), Chapter 1 (p. 10)

“We are in fact now living in the conditions of a perfect storm and the moment of truth, that very storm and moment of truth that will ensure and protect our interests, and make it so that your lives are better, more comfortable, more stable, and more secure.”

Dmitry Peskov (1967) Russian politician

CNN Interview (March 2022)

Truth, Perfection

“In fact, you could say that what orients a person to the bittersweet is a heightened awareness of finality.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Bittersweet Introduction at p. xxxiii

Personality

“You lie so well
I could never even tell
what were facts in your artful rearranging But I came back for more
and you laughed in my face and you rubbed it in
cause I’m a Labrador
and I run
when the gun
drops the dove again”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"Labrador" · Video (a shot for shot recreation of scenarios from her first hit video with 'Til Tuesday, "Voices Carry") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA1cX-wgMdM Song lyrics, Charmer (2012)

Lie, Art

“The rest of the world looks at you and sees who you are. They see you are a multi-ethnic group of Americans that are, in fact, together and united into one so — resolve: to defend your country and to help those who need help. That’s why you’re here.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2022, March 2022, Remarks to members of the 82nd Airborne Division in Poland

World, Help, Country

“We are journalists, and our mission is clear – to distinguish between facts and fiction.”

Dmitry Muratov (1961) Russian journalist and television presenter

Quotes about fact page 74

Quotes about fact
page 74