Top 1200 Historical Facts Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.

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

There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.

You're under pressure when you produce facts. You're working with facts in journalism, but you're under all kinds of formal constraints; there are expectations.

Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.

When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different.

Geological facts being of an historical nature, all attempts to deduce a complete knowledge of them merely from their still, subsisting consequences, to the exclusion of unexceptionable testimony, must be deemed as absurd as that of deducing the history of ancient Rome solely from the medals or other monuments of antiquity it still exhibits, or the scattered ruins of its empire, to the exclusion of a Livy, a Sallust, or a Tacitus.

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.

The Evangelical is not afraid of facts, for he knows that all facts are God's facts; nor is he afraid of thinking, for he knows that all truth is God's truth, and right reason cannot endanger sound faith.

The facts are to blame, my friend. We are all imprisoned by facts: I was born, I exist.

Most people find facts irritating. Facts interfere with their systems of denial.

Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.

The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context

The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...

Knowledge is the acquiring of facts, understanding is the interpreting of facts, wisdom the application.

Now, what I want is, Facts. . . . Facts alone are wanted in life.

I think it's my job or the artist's job, to try and find some solution or some reason to accept things. But given the grimmest reality, I feel the grimmest facts are the real facts, the true facts: that you're born, you die, you suffer, it's to no purpose, and you're gone forever, ever, ever, and that's it.

You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on.

But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make facts live.

Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

The story in that particular spot was an ancient history story, and we wanted to give it a historical feeling, which was why we used a historical calligraphy scroll come to life.

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.

Even if people tell me they have historical proof [that it is not historical], that doesn't really bother me.

If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.

What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts - not the facts themselves.

The facts, gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching.

Get the facts. Let's not even attempt to solve our problems without first collecting all the facts in an impartial manner.

The student is to collect and evaluate facts. The facts are locked up in the patient.

With handball, you have soft facts but not hard facts. The shot is wide, and then suddenly, it's a penalty.

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don't know whether it's a new thing, but it's certainly a current thing, in that it doesn't seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.

People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.

I'm very rational, so sometimes I need the facts, and if I don't have the facts, then I get huffy, and I move on.

I most carefully confined myself to facts and arranged those facts on as thin a line of connecting opinion as possible.

I don’t like facts, because facts get in the way of my feelings.

It is very obvious that we are not influenced by "facts" but by our interpretation of the facts.

Letting the facts speak for themselves is an immoral principle when we all know that facts and figures can be selected to prove anything.

I'm not a fan of the facts. Facts change; my opinion never does.

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

You can’t argue with facts. You’re not entitled to your own facts.

Advocates of unrestricted abortion do not want the public to focus on these undeniable facts of fetal development, but the facts cannot be ignored.

....the popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential music, not merely in the sense that the people experience the music, but also in the sense that the music is true to the historical experience, that the music reflects the historical experience. It is the spiritual expression of the historical experience of the Afro-Jamaican.

There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model.

I take facts about reasons to be fundamental in two ways. First, I believe that facts about reasons are not reducible to or analyzable in terms of facts of other kind, such as facts about the natural world. Second, I believe that reasons are the fundamental elements of the normative domain, and other normative notions, such as goodness and moral right and wrong can be explained in terms of reasons.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

If you're writing something that's clearly labelled as an alternative history, of course it's perfectly legitimate to play with known historical characters and events, but less so when you're writing an essentially straight historical fiction.

There's a willful ignorance. We indulge people who are willfully misrepresenting the facts. I don't think those [anti-choice] congresspeople are as much benignly misguided as they are intentionally and willfully ignorant of the facts of reproduction. That lends itself very well to them being ideologically driven and carrying out agendas that, if they were to be really honest about the facts, would be a tougher sell.

In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are.

Jews, Germans, and Allies is an important historical document, especially in light of those revisionists who would impose a universal amnesia about the suffering and losses incurred during the Holocaust. The grim statistics that Ms. Grossmann presents in her carefully researched and well-organized book carry evidence of the terrible truth. But the testimony of the survivors she quotes contains the final, ineradicable facts of history.

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

A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

I worked hard at memorizing lists of facts and figures, and carried with me a book of facts.

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

No longer can we afford to stuff the brains of the young with facts. The time is too short, the necessity for results too pressing. The new education must be based on the elimination of facts except as they illustrate principles. How to use facts, not how to accumulate them, is the purpose of true education.

If the facts don't fit your theory, just find some new facts.

In fact the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won't fit in, why so much the worse for the facts is my feeling.

With the historical fictions, I was already doing so much research, and so much of the stories was anchored by historical truth that the move to nonfiction didn't feel all that dramatic - just another half-step to the right.

Given a choice between their worldview and the facts, it's always interesting how many people toss the facts.