Quotes About Facts

When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted by what you wish to believe, but look only and surely at what are the facts.

People who make documentaries have to be faithful to the facts. But when you are making a drama, a fiction based on the life, all you have to be faithful to is the spirit of the facts, which I think I was in every case. As long as you don't violate their spirit, you can play with the facts.

No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempt to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.

It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly.

Oh, don't tell me of facts, I never believe facts; you know, [George] Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures.

Knowledge is the accumulation of facts wisdom is the deduction from these facts of useful laws, a process which can only take place by comparing the facts in one compartment with those in all others, thus giving a vision of the whole.

Intelligence is to provide the facts to us. The facts will usually take you to the truth. And then, when we get the truth, we have got to make the decisions and do what's best for this country.

I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination.

Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything - new ideas and established wisdom.

Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week.

I knew the facts of death before I knew the facts of life. There never was a time when I didn't see the skull beneath the skin.

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction.

To develop the creative attitude, analyze and focus on the wanted SOLUTION; seek out and fill your mind with the FACTS; write down ideas, both sensible and seemingly wild; let the facts and ideas simmer in your mind; evaluate, recheck, settle on the creative ideas.

World views are social constructions and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully.

Given all the facts that I'm young and I'm in good health and I'm famous - that I have talent, I have money - given all these facts, I want to know why I'm so unhappy.

No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing.... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes.

Facts - all facts - explain and confirm each other. They are only partially true until you link them together.

Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.

Kafka was a complex character in a complex historical era. In order to understand him, you have to do more than cite facts. It is necessary to connect the facts in a meaningful way. His relationship to Judaism, to his father, to women, to literature - all of this is interconnected; and there are decisive moments in his life, in which such interactions suddenly become visible and can be experienced in an almost sensuous manner. It is these moments above all that I try to narrate dramatically.

Physiology and psychology cover, between them, the field of vital phenomena; they deal with the facts of life at large, and in particular with the facts of human life.

We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts.

Tthe first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form.... You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life.

Faith does not ignore the facts, it ignores the power of the facts.

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

Fiction is not a dream. Nor is it guesswork. It is imagining based on facts, and the facts must be accurate or the work of imagining will not stand up.

I would say in just about every investigation we have, there will be differences of opinion, where you have partial facts, as to what those facts mean.

We think scientific literacy flows out of how many science facts can you recite rather than how was your brain wired for thinking. And it's the brain wiring that I'm more interested in rather than the facts that come out of the curriculum or the lesson plan that's been proposed.

Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . . . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.

One has to choose between engaging in stylistic research or the mere recording of facts. I feel that a filmmaker must go beyond the recording of facts. Moreover, I believe that Africans, in particular, must reinvent cinema. It will be a difficult task because our viewing audience is used to a specific film language, but a choice has to be made: either one is very popular and one talks to people in a simple and plain manner, or else one searches for an African film language that would exclude chattering and focus more on how to make use of visuals and sounds.

The accumulation of facts, even if interesting in themselves, should not constitute the main part of education; these facts, whether they be of classical learning or knick-knacks of history, will be of little use unless the mind has been trained to see them in proper perspective.

To me, it's an assignment, and my job is to tell the story. To me, it's easy, and to me, it's what I'm paid to do and what I've dreamt about doing from day one. Sometimes people don't like the stories, but it is what it is. So to me, I absolutely feel like no matter, if I'm calling a game between my brothers or my parents, the facts are the facts. The story dictates itself to me, and I relay the message to the viewers as well as I possibly can. That's going to be my job whether it's the Warriors or anybody else.

Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?" I do face facts," Meg said. They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.

Facts are almost irrelevant to most people. We make decisions based on emotion and then justify them later with whatever facts we can scrounge up in our defense.

America is a very divided country now. Not only are there red states and blue states, there are now red facts and blue facts. The right-wing believe in creationism. The left in evolution.

No talent in management is worth more than the ability to master facts-not just any facts, but the ones that provide the best answers.

My work is always based on reality. I'm not an artist that creates works of fiction. I'm not an artist who is in my studio inventing things out of my imagination - everything is based on reality, on real facts.

As a progressive discipline [biochemistry] belongs to the present century. From the experimental physiologists of the last century it obtained a charter, and, from a few pioneers of its own, a promise of success; but for the furtherance of its essential aim that century left it but a small inheritance of facts and methods. By its essential or ultimate aim I myself mean an adequate and acceptable description of molecular dynamics in living cells and tissues.

The primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group determine the necessity of education.

Do not become archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them.

It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.

I respect everything the District Attorney and Sheriff’s Office did to thoroughly investigate this tragic accident. While the process was long and emotionally difficult, it allowed for all the facts of the accident to be identified and known.

The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.

Inclusiveness isn't what I want to push back against. The obsession with facts is.

What I seek to do is to establish the facts as I see them, or as I understand them, and to engage in constructive dialogue to get good outcomes.

The chief point we must remember is that the great and rapid advance of the physical sciences took place in fields where it proved that explanation and prediction could be based on laws which accounted for the observed phenomena as functions of comparatively few variables - either particular facts or relative frequencies of events.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.