Quotes About Facts

Historians rewrite the truth every day. What interests us is the truth that gets the reader to reach for his wallet

Only theory can turn a heap of facts into a tower of knowledge

No other art can compare with cinema in the force, precision, and starkness with which it conveys awareness of facts and aesthetic structures existing and changing within time.

there is no impediment to our studying subjective (i.e., first-person) facts "objectively.

In neither case does the open-endedness of our inquiry suggest that there are no real facts to be known, or that some of the answers we have in hand are not really better than some others. Respect for diversity in our ethical views is, at best, an intellectual holding pattern until more of the facts are in.

Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

Il mondo forma i suoi giudizi sulle nostre azioni piuttosto dai fatti che da dove stia la ragione nei casi dubbi.

Tutti gli uomini nascono aristotelici o platonici, cioè razionali o irrazionali: le opinioni e le interpretazioni difficilmente interesseranno i primi, i fatti e le dimostrazioni non convinceranno mai i secondi.

Facts always are sensational.

But I'm thinking of the great death populations of the Gulags and the German labor camps. Why does the century—I don't know how else to put it—underwrite so much destruction? There is a lameness that comes over all of us when we consider these facts.

simplicity is not proof of truth. But since we can never understand true reality, if two models both explain the same facts, it is more rational to use the simpler one. It is a matter of convenience.

If you can't imagine any other explanation for a set of facts, it might be because you are bad at imagining things.

Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason.

Trump ignores facts whenever they are inconvenient. I know you don't want to think this works in terms of persuasion. But it does. I want to be clear that I'm not expressing a preference for ignoring facts. I'm simply saying that a Master Persuader can do it and still come out ahead, no matter how many times the media points out the errors.

The ideas that you think about the most are the ones that automatically and irrationally rise in your mental list of priorities. And Trump made us think about the wall a lot. He did that because he knew voters would see him as the strongest voice on the topic. It also sucked up media energy that might have focused on political topics he didn't understand at the same depth as his competitors. Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason.

When candidate Trump answered questions about policies, it was clear he didn't have a detailed understanding of the more complicated issues. Most observers saw this as a fatal flaw that would keep him out of the White House. I didn't see it that way. I saw it as Trump recognizing that people don't use facts and reason to make decisions. A skilled persuader can blatantly ignore facts and policy details so long as the persuasion is skillful.

When a decision involves lots of facts, and we have access to all the facts, we are more likely to hallucinate that we used our powers of reason to reach a decision. But when we recognize that we don't have all the facts, we hallucinate that we used our gut feeling to bridge the gap. In both cases we acted irrationally, and we tried to rationalize it to ourselves after the fact. That's how the Persuasion Filter sees it.

A good general rule is that people are more influenced by visual persuasion, emotion, repetition, and simplicity than they are by details and facts... On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact.

Master Persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason. I've

The main theme of this book is that humans are not rational. We bounce from one illusion to another, all the while thinking we are seeing something we call reality. The truth is that facts and reason don't have much influence on our decisions, except for trivial things, such as putting gas in your car when you are running low. On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact.

I want to be clear that I'm not expressing a preference for ignoring facts. I'm simply saying that a Master Persuader can do it and still come out ahead, no matter how many times the media points out the errors.

Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Jatkuvasti monimutkaistuvassa, järjettömiä yhteensattumia täynnä olevassa maailmassa ei monissa tilanteissa tarvita yhtään enempää tosiasioita – olemme nytkin jo hukkumassa niihin – vaan tunnettujen tosiasioiden parempaa ymmärtämistä...