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The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his "free will." He also discovers the natural fact of his mind's command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self.
Murray RothbardWith so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact itโs essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but itโs surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.
Francine ProseWhat is believed to be a fact is only a fact until another fact supersedes it. Science is only a fashion. Nothing more.
Robert RankinThere is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put- that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it's merely a theory.
Christine O'DonnellI think people felt like they did everything they had been told they should do to fix the problem, and it still wasn't fixed. Then you have these other parts of Sudan, [which] in actual fact have been left on the back burner for way too long, so there was this scramble, probably a year ago now, to focus on the fact that this peace agreement was basically falling apart.
Rebecca HamiltonTrying to forget really doesn't work. In fact, it's pretty much the same as remembering. But I tried to forget anyway, and to ignore the fact that I was remembering you all the time.
Rebecca SteadThe fact that people go to Portland to visit a tiny feminist bookstore-no matter what the impetus is for them getting there-the fact that they go in there and look around and shop for books or stationery or whatever, is a major source of pride for me.
Carrie BrownsteinTruth is used to vitalize a statement rather than devitalize it. Truth implies more than a simple statement of fact. "I don't have any whiskey," may be a fact but it is not a truth.
William S. BurroughsThe fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision.
Louise BoganFrom the fact that E is evidence for T and the fact that T entails M, it doesn't follow that E is evidence for M.
Elliott SoberIt would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted.
Ann CoulterAnd here's the fact: the fact is it doesn't solve the problem. First of all, if you taxed these people at 100 percent, basically next year you said, 'Look, every penny you make next year the government's going to take it from you,' it still doesn't solve the debt.
Marco RubioWarning: Do not read this story right after eating. In fact, don't read it right before eating either. In fact, just to be safe, don't read this story if you're ever planning to eat again.
Louis SacharYou will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.โ โA proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.โ โYou did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.
Arthur Conan DoyleI think it is an accurate statement to say that some people consider feelings of same-gender attraction to be the defining fact of their existence. There are also people who consider the defining fact of their existence that they are from Texas or that they were in the United States Marines. Or they are red-headed, or they are the best basketball player that ever played for such-and-such a high school. People can adopt a characteristic as the defining example of their existence and often those characteristics are physical.
Dallin H. OaksThe explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.
Benjamin HaydonThe general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.
Tony KushnerIn fact, I think [Donald Trump] welcomes the fact that he's got people in the room that may not agree with each other on everything, but he prefers to be presented opinions that are varying at the same time and then making an informed decision based on everyone's input before making decisions.
Reince PriebusThere are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths until we reach those which are primitive.
Gottfried LeibnizIn fact, I always assumed that most everything I read was true, to one degree or another. I couldn't articulate this fact until after I read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and he discussed Happening Truth, Story Truth, and Emotional Truth. I always understood that the facts of The Sun Also Rises or On the Road were the facts as dictated by a certain narrative structure, but because the experiences of those characters echoed my own feelings about the world. I knew there was a Happening Truth behind them.
Kevin KeckValidity is the touchstone of inference, and truth of judgment: the fact that vichyssoise is cold ratifies the judgment that vichyssoise is, indeed, cold, and the judgment that vichyssoise is cold expresses the fact that vichyssoise is cold.
David BerlinskiA system is said to be coherent if every fact in the system is related every other fact in the system by relations that are not merely conjunctive. A deductive system affords a good example of a coherent system.
Susan StebbingAdolescents have the right to be themselves. The fact that you were the belle of the ball, the captain of the lacrosse team, the president of your senior class, Phi Beta Kappa, or a political activist doesn't mean that your teenager will be or should be the same....Likewise, the fact that you were a wallflower, uncoordinated, and a C student shouldn't mean that you push your child to be everything you were not.
Laurence SteinbergThe fact that 'A Dirty Job' has comedy and supernatural horror in it, that both are woven in and out of it with a whimsical tone, despite the fact that it's about death, makes it hard to characterize with standard genre labels - but I have no problem with that. I'd call it a funny story about death, and leave it at that.
Christopher MooreA fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is directand simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.
Chauncey WrightIt's silly to have as one's sole object in life just making money, accumulating wealth. I work because I enjoy what I'm doing, and the fact that I make money at it - big money - is a fine-and-dandy side fact. Money gives me just one big thing that's really important, and that's the freedom of not having to worry about money. I'm concerned about values - moral, ethical, human values - my own, other people's, the country's, the world's values. Having money now gives me the freedom to worry about the things that really matter.
Johnny CarsonAcademic environments are generally characterised by the presence of peole who claim to understand more than in fact they do. Linguistic Philosophy has produced a great revolution, generating people who claim not to understand when in fact they do. Some achieve great virtuosity at it. Any beginner in philosophy can manage not to understand, say, Hegel, but I have heard people who were so advanced that they knew how not to understand writers of such limpid clarity as Bertrand Russell or A.J. Ayer.
Ernest GellnerI don't feel like my work is dependent on my size. I feel like my work is dependent on the fact that I'm an everywoman. I'd be an everywoman if I lost 20 pounds or if I gained 50 pounds, because of my attitude and it's my relationship to the world and the fact that like I have two front teeth that are bigger than the rest of my teeth.
Lena DunhamWe can in fact only define a weed, mutatis mutandis, in terms of the well-known definition of dirt - as matter out of place. What we call a weed is in fact merely a plant growing where we do not want it.
Edward James SalisburyThe percept is the reality. It is not in propositional form. But the most immediate judgment concerning it is abstract. It is therefore essentially unlike the reality, although it must be accepted as true to that reality. Its truth consists in the fact that it is impossible to correct it, and in the fact that it only professes to consider one aspect of the percept.
Charles Sanders PeirceIn the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.
Eric S. RaymondThus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order to see itself. This is indeed amazing. Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all. But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into a least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen.
George Spencer-BrownEven if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.
Joyce Carol OatesSome after-the-fact storytelling is inevitable, and, in fact, very good and useful. But then we want always to be able to enrich the stories, or maybe change the stories with a fresh infusion of specificity.
Nicholson BakerWhat the American Dream means to me is the fact that - what founded this country - when I think about those posters that were put up in Europe, which said, "Come to America and you'll have golden sidewalks. The land will be yours." There was something so inspirational about the fact that these immigrants from all over the world felt that here was a place of freedom, a place of opportunity.
Doris Kearns GoodwinIn fact, the difference between creative and interpretive, it all starts with the writing. Then if you can get the money together to make the film, then you're in touch with the visuals and the actual creation, and the sound of what you want to mean. Of course, some directors get inspired by what people do anyway. Don't feel the need [to stick to the script]. In fact, they sometimes go "That's not what I had in mind, but that suits the purpose well.".
Ciaran HindsFact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you.
Augusten BurroughsIt is only in the light of the inescapable fact of death that a person can adequately engage and enter upon the mysterious fact of life.
John E. HinesTo rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assumption that they do not differ from other men is implicitly to admit that factual inequality would justify unequal treatment, and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming. It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.
Friedrich August von HayekEveryone seems to have internalized the fact that you can say anything you want at a televised debate, and only a tiny fraction of the audience will ever see a fact-check. So why not claim the moon is square?
Ted CruzThe black socks [on me at Olympics in 1968] emphasized the fact that we had so many Blacks and people of color here in the United States, the greatest country in the world, that was running around in poverty every day, so we wanted to illustrate the fact that these individuals did not have shoes and they had to walk 20 miles to and from school every day with no shoes in the greatest country in the world.
John CarlosCivilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. The are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.
H. L. MenckenIn a lot of cases, you think that the art director and the production designer designed and built this amazing set, when in fact they only built part of it and were able to extend it using all of this fabulous technology.
Rick HeinrichsI'm frequently surprised, sometimes bugged off, and sometimes happy, depending on the actor. It's a fact of life that just as often as not an actor can breathe life into a line as he can destroy it by misinterpretation, and I've been blessed frequently by having good actors.
Rod Serling