Fact Quotes (page 102)
The fact to be remembered in considering... contact with [the] thought currents of others, is that we may decide the character of the thoughts that we shall receive by carefully observing the rule to think only along such lines as may be worthy of us, and which may tend to our betterment, strength, and advancement. In other words, we have the power to select our mental company.
Edward Walker
Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe. Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance. They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.
Terry Prachett
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
David Hume
In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder? is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?
Frederic Bastiat
The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power.
Howard Zinn
In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak.
Dorothy L. Sayers
The poet was, of course, always present to assist the debater. Though the logic of Lewis's Christian apologetics may be fallible, the imagination of the writing with its brilliantly-conceived analogies is itself enough to win a reader to his side. As Austin Farrer expressed it, "We think we are listening to an argument; in fact we are presented with a vision; and it is the vision that carries conviction.
Humphrey Carpenter