Facts Quotes - Page 16

• One of the difficulties with all our institutions is the fact that we've emphasized the reward instead of the service.

  Harry S. Truman

  Rewards, Institutions, Difficulty

  Harry S. Truman, Robert H. Ferrell (1997). “Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman”, p.166, University of Missouri Press

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• First, what does truth require? It requires us to face the facts as they are, not to involve ourselves in self-deception; to refuse to think merely in slogans. If we are to work for the future of the city, let us deal with the realities as they actually are, not as they might have been, and not as we wish they were.

  John F. Kennedy

  Truth, Reality, Thinking

  "Address at the Free University of Berlin". www.presidency.ucsb.edu. June 26, 1963.

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• [I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Men, Civilization, Roots

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set up a utilitarian interpretation of the phenomenon of life which has come down to us and may still be considered as the commonplace of everyday thinking. ... An innate blindness seems to have closed the eyes of this epoch to all but those facts which show life as a phenomenon of utility

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Eye, Thinking, Everyday

  "History as a System". Book by Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1962.

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• I have left the obvious, essential fact to this point, namely, that it is the Russian Armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet Armies.

  Winston Churchill

  Ocean, Army, Air

  "War Situation". Speech in the House of Commons, api.parliament.uk. August 2, 1944.

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• The very word "sorrow" colours the fact of sorrow, the pain of it.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Pain, Sorrow, Colour

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• We have to face the fact that most men and women out there are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit.

  John W. Gardner

  Men, Bored, Care

  "Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society". Book by John W. Gardner, 1964.

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• I also think if you get sort of early success there's always this part of you which feels like, "I need to address the imbalance, I need to kind of earn that success after the fact". I try to find roles that are hard and also, I still find now, even after I've done loads of really random movies, directors are really surprised that I want to play the parts that I want to play. They just assume that you want to only do the honorable good guy lead who saves the day or dies at the end .

  Robert Pattinson

  Thinking, Play, Guy

  Source: collider.com

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• If you make the same guess often enough it ceases to be a guess and becomes a Scientific Fact. This is the inductive method.

  C. S. Lewis

  Enough, Method, Ifs

  The Pilgrim's Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism Book Two Chapter I (p. 37)

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• The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

  Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.128, Penguin

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• The myth that holds that the great corporation is the puppet of the market, the powerless servant of the consumer, is, in fact one of the devices by which its power is perpetuated.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Puppets, Corporations, Servant

  "The Age of Uncertainty". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter 9, p. 258, 1977.

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• Seaboard Air Line, which was thought by numerous innocents to provide a foothold in aviation, was another favorite, although, in fact, it was a railroad.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Air, Railroads, Lines

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2017). “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went”, p.123, Princeton University Press

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• Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Organization

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2015). “The New Industrial State”, p.121, Princeton University Press

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• The questions which for years were in dispute between the State and General Government, and which unhappily were not decided by the dictates of reason, but referred to the decision of war, having been decided against us, it is the part of wisdom to acquiesce in the result, and of candor to recognize the fact.

  Robert E. Lee

  War, Government, Years

  Letter to former Virginia governor John Letcher on August 28, 1865. "Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee" by John William Jones, p. 203, 1874.

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• I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of life's factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditions, one's mental state, the ecology, and so on.

  Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  Men, Civilization, Self

  Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Willem Samuels (1999). “The Mute's soliloquy: a memoir”, Hyperion Books

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• If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.

  Jayne Anne Phillips

  Country, Memories, Distance

  FaceBook post by Jayne Anne Phillips from Feb 25, 2012

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• I've always liked rooms where the party hasn't started yet...I love the feeling that anything could happen. After the party, when anything already has happened, there's usually the inevitable fact to face that anything wasn't all you'd hoped it to be.

  Jillian Lauren

  Party, Feelings, Rooms

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• Life is bendable to our will more than we know. In fact, that's the deal. If we don't know that life bends to our will, it will not. So the trick is to know that life is on our side -- and but awaits our command.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Sides, Life Is, Tricks

  FaceBook post by Neale Donald Walsch from Mar 27, 2017

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• How meagre one's life becomes when it is reduced to its basic facts. And the last, most complete reduction is on one's tombstone: a name, two dates.

  Bill Vaughan

  Tombstone, Names, Two

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• It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.

  Saul Bellow

  Believe, Artist, Views

  Saul Bellow (2016). “It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future”, p.62, Odyssey Editions

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• The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Black, Causes, United States

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve, Francis Bowen, Patrick Renshaw (1998). “Democracy in America”, p.140, Wordsworth Editions

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• The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers.

  Heinrich Heine

  Hypocrisy, Support, Might

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• It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society .

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Passionate, Unions, Novelty

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

  Men, Mind, Principles

  "Science and the Modern World". Book by Alfred North Whitehead. Chapter 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", 1925.

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• People never grasp the fact that they're going to have to go through the same thing again. They get to the sort of five-year stretch or the seven-year itch or whatever these tension points are that seem to be organic, built in, like the tide coming in and going out. It's like every time the tide goes out you quit--you move your house or something.

  John Lennon

  Moving, Years, People

  John Lennon, Yōko Ono, David Sheff, G. Barry Golson (1981). “The Playboy interviews with John Lennon and Yōko Ono”, Putnam Pub Group

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