A Quote by Mark Twain

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

Mark Twain

Quote Topics

Facts More Pliable Statistics Stubborn

Quote Author

Mark Twain
American - Writer
November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910

Facts are stubborn things, but, as some one has wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

I do not ... reject the use of statistics in medicine, but I condemn not trying to get beyond them and believing in statistics as the foundation of medical science. ... Statistics ... apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still [uncertain or] indeterminate. ... There will always be some indeterminism ... in all the sciences, and more in medicine than in any other. But man's intellectual conquest consists in lessening and driving back indeterminism in proportion as he gains ground for determinism by the help of the experimental method.

Claude Bernard

From what I can tell, pollsters are generally fairly stick-to-the-facts folks. They deal in facts and statistics.

Sharyl Attkisson

There are real facts in my poems, but facts mixed up in the perverse stubborn stew of imagination, add a pinch or two of revenge and retribution, a dash of amplification and reparation.

Philip Schultz

The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.

Alfred North Whitehead

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

John Adams

Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late. Facts all come with points of view. Facts don't do what I want them to. Facts just twist the truth around. Facts are living turned inside out.

David Byrne

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact.

John Adams

Facts are stubborn things.

Ronald Reagan

I feel like if I were to get another tattoo, it would probably be those two words. Just stubborn, stubborn, stubborn gladness.

Elizabeth Gilbert

doubts, like facts, are stubborn things.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The facts of life are very stubborn things.

Cleveland Amory

Thanks to postmodernism, we tend to see all facts as meaningless trivia, no one more vital than any other. Yet this disregard for facts qua facts is intellectually crippling. Facts are the raw material of thought, and the knowledge of significant facts makes sophisticated thought possible.