Ideals are a curse because they prevent you from thinking directly, simply and truly, when you are faced with facts. The ideal, the what should be, is an escape from what is. The what is is the fact that you are afraid—afraid of what your parents will say, of what people will think, afraid of society, afraid of disease, death; and if you face what is, look at it, go into it even though it brings you misery, and understand it, then you will find that your mind becomes extraordinarily simple, clear; and in that very clarity there is the cessation of fear.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things
It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
—Bill Vaughan
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life—so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
—Matt Cartmill
Facts are the enemy of truth.
—Miguel de Cervantes
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
—Aldous Huxley
We all want to be happy, and we're all going to die.… You might say these are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every human being on this planet.
—William Boyd
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
—Edward Teller
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
—Alec Bourne
Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.
—Mark Twain
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
—Benjamin Disraeli
I never guess. 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.
—Arthur Conan Doyle
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
—Anatole France
Knowledge is power only if man knows what facts not to bother with.
—Robert Staughton Lynd
The truth is more important than the facts.
—Frank Lloyd Wright
The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea.
—Mortimer Adler