Facts

“ The justification of them is that when we wake to consciousness of life we find them facts which already hold us in the bonds of tradition, custom, and habit. The mores contain embodied in them notions, doctrines, and maxims, but they are facts. ”

“ Putting these, then, at least for the moment, to one side, we find ourselves face to face with two great and indisputable facts that everywhere force themselves on the attention and compel consideration. ”

“ The great shifting of universes in this discussion occurs when we carry the word 'truth' from the subjective into the objective realm, applying it sometimes to a property of opinions, sometimes to the facts which the opinions assert. ”

“ The world, we are told, was made especially for man—a presumption not supported by all the facts. ”

“ They drew the attention of mankind to the reality of a certain immutable fact. These truths, these principles, these facts, have all been tested, and they have been found to be everlasting. In other words, we find there are certain truths, certain principles, certain facts, that every living thing must obey, must subscribe to, must live up to or perish. ”

“ Thus, knowledge of general principles must be applied to particular affairs, and this supposes that one knows how to reason correctly, how to infer the particular from the general, how to put facts together. ”

“ The [2] power of vividly realising and portraying men, or societies or modes of thought that have long since passed away; the power of arranging and combining great multitudes of various facts; the power of judging with discrimination, accuracy, and impartiality conflicting arguments or evidence; the power of tracing through the long course of events the true chain of cause and effect, selecting the facts that are most valuable and significant and explaining the relation between general causes and particular effects, are all very different and belong to different types of mind. ”

“ THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’ ”

“ And, furthermore, what I have asserted about the insight which the reason gives us is so far from being opposed to the pragmatist's facts, that every rational consideration of the type of truth which they define leads us back to the consideration of absolute truth and to the assertion of an all-inclusive insight. ”

“ Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better definition, as—"a statement of the facts as they are." ”

“ There has been, as in art, a study of values, which secures perspective and solidity in our representation of facts. On the one hand, a given utterance or event cannot be drawn into evidence as if all items were of equal consequence, like sovereigns in a bag. ”

“ What strikes one in his criticisms of life even more than their penetration is their sanity and completeness. Many a controversial victory he has won in discussions about letters or life, or sometimes even in politics, by attending to the one question, What are the actual and complete facts of the case? He takes human nature all round, and sees how far a proposed remedy answers to all its needs. ”

“ But in order to bring out facts and figures they must be thrown against the background on which they have risen and developed, and in the deep perspectives of which there are elements which are the causes of their existence. ”

“ Therefore the great truth of moral principle should be regarded above the smaller truths of material facts and mental logic—and many of the inhabitants of your world, if I know mortal nature, will agree with me. ”

“ There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. ”

“ Of the facts that are known to us we invent certain explanations. From each of those explanations we deduce consequences; and if those consequences agree with new facts, they confirm the explanation, whereas if they disagree they tend to disprove it. ”

“ It is often very illuminating, therefore, to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion? ”

“ It is of the utmost importance, wherever clear and distinct conceptions are required, to make out in the first instance whether the term in question, or the main terms of the question in dispute, represents or represent a fact or class of facts simply, or some self-established and previously known idea or principle, of which the facts are instances and realizations, or which is introduced in order to explain and account for the facts. ”

“ This 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 4passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society. ”

“ Summary.+—To summarize the preceding paragraphs, the authority we quote, the maxims we state, the facts we adduce become valuable because they appeal to general theories already believed by the reader. Success in argument demands, therefore, that we consider carefully what theories may probably be in the mind of our audience, and that we present our argument in such a way as to appeal to those theories. ”

“ “On what else is the whole world run but immediate impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres. ”

“ Facts are many, but the truth is one. ”

“ My facts shall all be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic, facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought, with these I deal. ”

“ They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything! ”

“ Meantime, some prominent facts appear to stand out from their history and condition, which it may be useful to recognise, while refusing to pronounce upon their positive or comparative virtue and happiness. ”

“ Given a man's condition in life, his habits, his occupation, his church, his associations, his politics, and given on the other hand a certain state of facts, it is nearly ascertainable how he is going to decide those facts. ”

“ They are seeking to go behind stubborn and irreducible facts: they wish to explain in the light of universal principles the mutual reference between the various details entering into the flux of things. ”

“ By substantial truth we mean this—that in all the great systems of opinion which have had a deep hold on the human mind, over broad spaces and through long periods, there is something suited to man's nature, and corresponding with the facts of the case. ”

“ Experiment and observation, contact with facts and laws independent of our subjectivity, and marked by all the features of a commanding reality, are calculated to correct this one-sidedness, to awaken deeper convictions with regard to the absoluteness of truth and with this strengthened love of truth and reverence for truth to help forward the development of the moral and higher side of man's intellectual life. ”

“ To comprehend the real position we are forced to the conviction that the world of facts is the field in which, and that laws are the means by which, those higher standards of moral and aesthetical value are being realized ”

“ Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied. ”

“ "In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; ”

“ Whilst common sense looks at things or visible nature as real and final facts, poetry, or the imagination which dictates it, is a second sight, looking through these, and using them as types or words for thoughts which they signify. ”

“ The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them. ”

“ Such are the arguments that are used, both publicly and privately, in every discussion upon this point. They are generally full of passion and of error, and built upon facts which in themselves are most false. ”

“ Of course common-sense, after all, must be trusted on such themes to draw the line not only between opinions and theories, but even in the statement and interpretation of facts, as they come from romancers, sentimentalists, idealists, and philanthropists, or from literal, practical, matter-of-fact persons, speaking from experience. ”

“ Eschewing all expressions of opinion on controverted points of science, philosophy, religion, and politics, it aims at an accurate representation of facts and institutions, of the results of physical research, of the prominent events in the history of the world, of the most significant productions of literature and art, and of the celebrated individuals whose names have become associated with the conspicuous phenomena of their age—doing justice to all men, all creeds, all sections. ”

“ With this reservation, we may say that the control of moral truths is made by experience like that of physical truths. In all departments of knowledge, a thought may be held as true when it accounts for facts. ”

“ Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial,—there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,—are useful. ”

“ My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ”

“ The practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable part of his argument to show, how those powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. ”

“ A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; ”

“ The facts will speak for themselves. Credit them or not, but read! ”

“ It consists in the impression made on the mind for the time being by a particular fact, or by the interests of a particular group of persons, to which attention is directed while other facts or the interests of other persons are entirely left out of account. ”

“ Our life is ever cherishing what we are pleased to call its verities, some in religion and morals, some in politics, some in mathematics and science, some in the more general relations to nature, but what elusive things these verities are! ”

“ Only as far as that shines through them, are these times or any times worth consideration. I wish to speak of the politics, education, business, and religion around us, without ceremony or false deference. You will absolve me from the charge of flippancy, or malignity, or the desire to say smart things at the expense of whomsoever, when you see that reality is all we prize, and that we are bound on our entrance into nature to speak for that. ”

“ But how do we human beings get at what we call natural truth? By observation—so men say—and by experience. But by whose experience? By the united, by the synthesized, by the revised, corrected, rationally criticized, above all by the common, experience of many individuals. ”