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Quotes about facts

50 quotes from 40 people

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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 Adams1735–1826Boston Massacre trial (1770)
If any theories or opinions of mine can be damaged by facts, so much the worse for my theories.
James A. Garfield1831–1881Commissioner Wells’s Report. Remarks made in the House of Representatives, January 1869. Quoted in
I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.
Michael Faraday1791–1867Lecture notes of 1858, quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) by Bence Jones, Vol. 2, p. 403
- Poetry
Mysteries are irritated by facts.
Norman Mailer1923–2007Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)
What could I do! Facts are such horrid things!
Jane Austen1775–1817“Lady Susan”, Letter XXXII (1871)
- Comedy
The world is the totality of facts, not things.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), 1.1
- Philosophy
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
Albert Einstein1879–1955Letter to Michele Besso (8 October 1952)
- Science
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
John Ruskin1819–1900The Stones of Venice (1853), Volume III
- Science
Someone who is determined to disbelieve something can manage to disregard an Everest of evidence for it.
George Willborn 1941Column, March 14, 2014, “Democrats are making income inequality worse” at washingtonpost.com
Who’s Britannica to tell me that the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say that it was built in 1941, that’s my right as an American.
Stephen Colbertborn 1964White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner (April 2006)
- Comedy
Facts do not “speak for themselves.” They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
Thomas Sowellborn 1930A Conflict of Visions (1987), Ch. 1: The Role of Vision
A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Television address (4 March 1987) on Iran-Contra affair
- Truth & Lies
Politeness does not interfere with facts, politeness is just another fact.
Gertrude Stein1874–1946Paris France (1940)
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James1842–1910“The Will to Believe” p. 10
Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970On History (1904)
- History