Facts Quotes - page 35
Barred from philosophy and bored by facts, he wanted to teach his students something not wholly useless. The number of students whose minds were of an order above the average was, in his experience, barely one in ten; the rest could not be much stimulated by any inducements a teacher could suggest. All were respectable, and in seven years of contact, Adams never had cause to complain of one; but nine minds in ten take polish passively, like a hard surface; only the tenth sensibly reacts.
Henry Adams
He took their facts for granted. He knew no more than a firefly about rays - or about race or sex - or ennui - or a bar of music - or a pang of love - or a grain of musk - or of phosphorus - or conscience - or duty - or the force of Euclidian geometry - or non-Euclidian - or heat - or light - or osmosis - or electrolysis - or the magnet - or ether - or vis inertiae - or gravitation - or cohesion - or elasticity - or surface tension - or capillary attraction - or Brownian motion - or of some scores, or thousands, or millions of chemical attractions, repulsions or indifferences which were busy within and without him; or, in brief, of Force itself, which, he was credibly informed, bore some dozen definitions in the textbooks, mostly contradictory, and all, as he was assured, beyond his intelligence.
Henry Adams
The complaint of the French artist against the Norman, is the "mesquin" treatment of dividing his tower into stories of equal height. Even in the twelfth century and in religious architecture, artists already struggled over the best solution to this peculiarly American problem of the twentieth century, and when tourists return to New York, they may look at the twenty-story towers which decorate the city, to see whether the Norman or the French plan has won; but this at least will be sure in advance:- the Norman will be the practical scheme which states the facts, and stops; while the French will be the graceful one, which states the beauties and more or less fits the facts to suit them.
Henry Adams
Next, the facts are that there is a Path and that men have trodden it before us; that the swifter evolution is possible; that the laws of it may be known, the conditions of it understood, the stages of it be trodden; and that at the end of that Path there are standing Those Who once were men of the world, but now are the Guardians of the world, the Elder Brethren of our race, the Teachers and the Prophets of the past, stretching upwards in ranks of ever-more dazzling light from the ending of the Path for man to the highest Ruler of the world in which we live.
Annie Besant
Now, one of the great facts which underlie the whole possibility of a Path of Human Perfecting, that I must take for granted throughout the lectures - for to deal with it as a matter for argument would lead us far away from our subject - one of the fundamental facts in Nature, is the fact of reincarnation. That means the gradual growth of man through many lives, through many experiences of the physical world, of the intermediate world, and also of the world called heaven. Evolution would be too short to enable a man to grow from imperfection to perfection, unless he had many opportunities, a long, long road to lead him upward.
Annie Besant
We must assume, at least for the time, the existence of certain great facts in Nature. I do not mean that our man of the world, in taking his first step towards the Path, need either know or recognize these facts. Facts in Nature do not change either with our believing or non-believing. Facts of Nature remain facts whether we know them or not, and since we are here in the realm of Nature, and under the order of law, the knowledge of the facts and the knowledge of the law are not essential for the steps which lead man to the Path.
Annie Besant
There's a leveling homogeneity in America today created by television. Each day it passes over the vast land mass, over the states nudging each other like the sovereignties of the Balkans, creating a unifying cloud of aesthetic properties and experience. East and West, North and South are wrapped in a sort of over-soul of images, facts, happenings, celebrities. This debris is as sacred to our current fiction as gossip about the new vicar was to Trollope. And there it is on the page, informing the domestically restless households, father off somewhere, mother chagrined. Sons and daughters writing the books.
Elizabeth Hardwick
It's never pleasant to have your integrity questioned, of course, no matter who you are. But when it's questioned by someone who doesn't even know you, someone who doesn't even have the facts straight, yet whose name carries the authority of science -- well, that's not exactly guaranteed to make your day.
Robert Butts
If you believe in the sinfulness of the world, for instance, then you will search out from normal sense data those facts that confirm your belief. But beyond that, at other levels you also organize your mental world in such a way that attracts to yourself events that - again - will confirm your beliefs.
Robert Butts
Your system is not the most elementary, but it is one of the most elementary, and it is a way that the inner self acquaints itself with certain basic facts. It therefore provides itself with a large variety of environments in various reincarnations, with problems of various natures, and with diverse circumstances.
Robert Butts
The inner ego always identifies with its source-identity as a beloved, individualized portion of the universe. It is aware of the universal love that is its heritage. It is also aware of the infinite power and strength that composes the very fabric of its being. Through being made aware of these facts, the exterior ego can begin to feel a quicker sense of support and nourishment. The knowledge can let it relax, let go, so that it feels its life couched and safe, and knows itself to be indeed a beloved child of the universe, both ancient and young at once, with an identity far beyond the annals of time. It is of great value, then, that each person remember this universal affiliation.
Robert Butts
It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age. Science builds its structure of hypothetical "elements" and laws of their behavior, touching on reality at crucial points.... But the historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it.
Susanne Langer
Probably the profoundest difference between human and animal needs is made by one piece of human awareness, one fact that is not present to animals, because it is never learned in any direct experience: that is our foreknowledge of death. The fact that we ourselves must die is not a simple and isolated fact. It is built on a wide survey of facts that discloses the structure of history as a succession of overlapping brief lives, the patterns of youth and age, growth and decline; and above all that, it is built on the logical insight that one's own life is a case in point. Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.
Susanne Langer
For a rational actor, the information he uses to shape his beliefs is a variable rather than a given. Before deciding how to act, he has to make a preliminary decision concerning the quantity of resources he is prepared to invest in looking for the relevant facts. A general must not attack before he has surveyed the terrain, or a surgeon operate before he has examined the patient. However, they must not delay too long, for then they may be surprised by the enemy's attack or flight, or by the patient's death.
Jon Elster
A careful examination of the facts will decide the problem of government more and more in favor of liberty, just as it does all other economic problems. We are convinced, so far as we are concerned, that one day societies will be established to agitate for the freedom of government, as they have already been established on behalf of the freedom of commerce.And we do not hesitate to add that after this reform has been achieved, and all artificial obstacles to the free action of the natural laws that govern the economic world have disappeared, the situation of the various members of society will become the best possible.
Gustave de Molinari
When the minister leaves the seminary, he is not seeking the truth. He has it. He has a revelation from God, and he has a creed in exact accordance with that revelation. His business is to stand by that revelation and to defend that creed. Arguments against the revelation and the creed he will not read, he will not hear. All facts that are against his religion he will deny.
Robert G. Ingersoll
We know that they convinced millions that celibacy is the greatest of all virtues-that women are perpetual temptations, the enemies of true holiness-that monks and priests are nobler than fathers, that nuns are purer than mothers. We know that they taught the blessed absurdity of the Trinity-that God once worked at the trade of a carpenter in Palestine. We know that they divided knowledge into sacred and profane-taught that Revelation was sacred-that Reason was blasphemous-that faith was holy and facts false.
Robert G. Ingersoll
