Update

Related Content

In this work

Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 29 April 2025

Facts 

see also Theory
  1. The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability.
    A. J. Ayer 1910–89 English philosopher: Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) ch. 1
  2. I don't think that makes any difference. A door-opener for the Communist party is worse than a member of the Communist party. When someone walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, he's a duck.
    of Communist affiliations during the McCarthy era
    James B. Carey 1911–73 American labour leader: in New York Times 3 September 1948; see Harris
  3. 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.
    after reading The Origin of Species
    Erasmus Darwin 1804–81 English physician: letter to Charles Darwin, 23 November 1859; F. Darwin (ed.) The Life of Charles Darwin (1902)
  4. Now, what I want is, Facts…Facts alone are wanted in life.
    Mr Gradgrind
    Charles Dickens 1812–70 English novelist: Hard Times (1854) bk. 1, ch. 1
  5. What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
    Christopher Hitchens 1949–2011 English-born American journalist and writer: in Slate Magazine 20 October 2003
  6. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
    Aldous Huxley 1894–1963 English novelist: Proper Studies (1927)
  7. Roundabout the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.
    William James 1842–1910 American philosopher: The Will to Believe (1897)
  8. When the facts change, I change my mind.
    John Maynard Keynes 1883–1946 English economist: in the 1930s, attributed; Alfred L. Malabre Lost Prophets (1994)
  9. Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
    Henri Poincaré 1854–1912 French mathematician and philosopher of science: Science and Hypothesis (1905) ch. 9
  10. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
    Carl Sagan 1934–96 American scientist and writer: Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (1997)
  11. Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
    Henry David Thoreau 1817–62 American writer: Journal 11 November 1850
  12. Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.
    Mark Twain 1835–1910 American writer: Rudyard Kipling From Sea to Sea (1899) letter 37