FACT QUOTES

quotations about facts

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?

WASHINGTON IRVING

The Sketch Book

Tags: Washington Irving


When facts speak, the wise man listens.

STEPHEN KING

The Wind through the Keyhole

Tags: Stephen King


Facts may speak for themselves.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

letter to Major-General Greene, Jan. 22, 1780

Tags: George Washington


Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Time Must Have a Stop

Tags: Aldous Huxley


Facts are like rocks: they don't talk; they must be interpreted by one's assumptions.

JOHN D. MORRIS

The Young Earth


The birth of a new fact is always a wonderful thing to experience. It's dualistically called a "discovery" because of the presumption that it has an existence independent of anyone's awareness of it. When it comes along, it always has, at first, a low value. Then, depending on the value-looseness of the observer and the potential quality of the fact, its value increases, either slowly or rapidly, or the value wanes and the fact disappears.

ROBERT M. PIRSIG

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.

SALMAN RUSHDIE

Midnight's Children

Tags: Salman Rushdie


When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covere a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.

DEAN KOONTZ

The Good Guy

Tags: Dean Koontz


Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.

UMBERTO ECO

Foucault's Pendulum

Tags: Umberto Eco


The educated don't get that way by memorizing facts; they get that way by respecting them.

TOM HEEHLER

"The Well-Spoken Thesaurus"


Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!

HOMER SIMPSON

The Simpsons

Tags: The Simpsons


Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

JOHN ADAMS

Argument in Defense of the British Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, Dec. 4, 1770

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But facts are chiels that winna ding, and downa be disputed.

ROBERT BURNS

"A Dream"

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The facts are always less than what really happened.

NADINE GORDIMER

Conversations with Nadine Gordimer

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Facts are carpet-tacks under the pneumatic tires of theory.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

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We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe when compared with a stubborn theory.

SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS

The Gentle Reader


A wise and honest man looks to broad facts, and forms his judgment from them; a rogue endeavours to lead your attention off the true scent, away to details, that he may puzzle and confound you with minutiae always difficult to detect, and sometimes impossible to deny, but which, nevertheless, are nothing more than stakes laid in your path to trip you up, that he may plunder you at his convenience. If, therefore, the broad facts appear suspicious, doubt, but if details be brought to aid them, be sure, that you are in the high road to be deceived.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY

The Maxims

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A man never gets anywhere if facts and his ledgers don't square.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The Sound and the Fury

Tags: William Faulkner


The facts are really not at all like fish on a fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use--these two factors, of course, being determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch.

E. H. CARR

What is History?


Facts don't always smack down fear, because fear isn't always about facts--or logic, or reason, or reality.

JEFFREY WEBER

From Idea to Exit