Quotes about Facts and Truths

Speaking Truth

Any theory can be made to fit any facts by means of approximate, additional assumptions. Mark Holden  

A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggest that a super intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.  Sir Fred Hoyle

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. Thomas Jefferson

On carelessly made or insufficient observations how many fine theories are built up which do not bear examination. Andre Gide 

Any clod can have the facts, but having an opinion is an art. Charles McCabe

Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as a touchstone for our judgment.  John F Kennedy.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Hypotheses are only the pieces of scaffolding which are erected round a building during the course of construction, and which are taken away as soon as the edifice is completed. Goethe 

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Martin Luther King

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. Wilton Jones

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use. Saint Exupery 

Many of the truths we cling to are greatly the result of our own point of view. John Lucas

You too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow. Luigi Pirandello 

There are but two truths in the world the Bible and Greek architecture. Nicholas Biddle

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.  Aldous Huxley

There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life is the process of discovering them over and over and over.  David Nichols

Facts may weaken under extreme heat and pressure. Graham Bergen  

A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it. Stanley Baldwin

If facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. Peter Maier

Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts. Bette Davis

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion; none to speak of.  Taylor Smith

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.  Henry Adams

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me.  Camillo Di Cavour

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones, is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.  Jules Henri Poincairé

If a scientist uncovers a publishable fact, it will become central to his theory. His theory, in turn, will become central to all scientific truth. Murphy’s Law

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out. Oscar Wilde

I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older.  Michel Montaigne

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.  Virginia Woolf

Mental things which have not gone in through the senses are vain and bring forth no truth except detrimental.  Leonardo

Each one of us has his own reality to be respected before god, even when it is harmful to one’s very self. Luigi Pirandello 

The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.  Richard Sheridan

Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don’t move, today is today, always is today. Octavio Paz

My way of joking is to tell the truth. That’s the funniest joke in the world.  Muhammad Ali

What was once called the objective world is a sort of ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself. Lewis Mumford 

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts… Seek simplicity and distrust it. Alfred North Whitehead.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth. Benjamin Disraeli

All our separate fictions add up to joint reality. Stanislaw Lec 

Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only ‘certain’ standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth. Wilmot Chowder 

What is actual is actual for only one time; and only for one place. T. S. Eliot

The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it. John Stuart Mill 

We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.  Patrick Moynihan

You can prove almost anything with the evidence of a small enough segment of time. How often, in any search for truth, the answer of the minute is positive, the answer of the hour qualified, the answers of the year contradictory. Edwin Way Teale

Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable. Cyril Connolly 

Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally promoting a falsehood, isn’t it. Anthony Hope

If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real. Jacques Barzun 

There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth. Jean Giraudoux

I like reality, it tastes of bread. Jean Anouilh 

Thank god, except at its one moment there’s never any such thing as a bare fact. Ten minutes later, half an hour later, one’s begun to glaze the fact over with a deposit of some sort. Elizabeth Bowen

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. Emerson

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called facts. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Oliver Wendell Holmes

Realists do not fear the results of their study. Dostoevsky 

A fact is like a sack which won’t stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist. Luigi Pirandello 

Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation, because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate it than to refine themselves. Charles Caleb Colton

The utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact. Alfred North Whitehead 

Quotes about Action

The worshipper of energy is too physically energetic to see that he cannot explore certain higher fields until he is still. Clarence Day

Every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. Emerson

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death. Jean Anouilh 

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing. Thomas Jefferson

There is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to great purpose, and enabled.  John Ruskin

Urgent necessity prompts many to do things, at the very thoughts of which they perhaps would start at other times. Cervantes 

It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad. Plutarch

How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man, is to become, to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being. Saint Exupery 

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence…. In time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties… Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. Laurence J Peter

The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills. The wise are active; the virtuous are tranquil. The wise are joyful; the virtuous are long lived. Confucius 

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. Don Foley 

What I must do is all that concerns me, and not what people think. Emerson

Everyone has time if he likes. Business runs after nobody; people cling to it of their own free will and think that to be busy is a proof of happiness. Seneca

A thought that does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action that does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all. Georges Bernanos  

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to do. Khalil Gibran

Involvement with people is always a very delicate thing; it requires real maturity to become involved and not get all messed up. Bernard Cooke

There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action. Goethe

Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. Emerson

It is by losing himself in the objective, in inquiry, creation, and craft, that a man becomes something. Paul Goodman

Though men pride themselves on their great actions, often they are not the result of any great design but of chance. LA Rochefoucauld 

We immoralists have the suspicion that the decisive value of an action lies precisely in what is unintentional in it. Nietzsche 

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. Emerson

Men of action: those men who are too busy with the day’s work to see beyond it. They are essential men, we cannot do without them, and yet we must not allow all our vision to be bound by their limitations. Pearl S. Buck  

Saying is one thing and doing is another; we are to consider the sermon and the preacher distinctly and apart. Montaigne 

Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I’d rather lie around. No contest. Eric Clapton

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. H Williams

Is it really so difficult to judge a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret. Mary McCarthy

For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, and though a late, a sure reward succeeds. William Congreve

Good words without deeds are rushes and reeds. Proverb

There are people who want to be everywhere at once and they seem to get nowhere. Carl Sandburg

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people and new deeds for new. Thoreau

Any theory can be made to fit any facts by means of approximate, additional assumptions. Patrick Cully 

The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant. Epictetus 

Progress does not consist in replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is right. It consists in replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.  S. Hawkins 

You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd. Oscar Wilde

Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that, what have you had? Henry James

Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within. Schopenhauer 

Everything that has been achieved, for good or for bad, is due to the way humans are. The future will be no different. Whether we reach for the stars or plumb the depths, humans will be responsible. Tom Johnston

The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them not by their present actions, but for the present only. Napoleon  

Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers. Learned Hand

In theory, there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught, but in life there are many things to draw us aside. Epictetus

Since it is not granted us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived. Pliny the Younger

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. Don Troy

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions. Murphy’s Law