Her favorite stepping-aside technique was to lay out a dizzying mountain of complex steps and then pronounce the conclusion self-evident. Excuse me? Things that are self-evident don't need you or the presentation anyway. Relying only on logic, on what can be factually established, may inform or intimidate, but it will rarely stir anyone into action or change.
Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.
Le savant doit ordonner ; on fait la science avec des faits comme une maison avec des pierres ; mais une accumulation de faits n'est pas plus une science qu'un tas de pierres n'est une maison.The Scientist must set in order. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
Stupid religion makes stupid beliefs, stupid leaders make stupid rules, stupid environment makes stupid health, stupid companions makes stupid behaviour, stupid movies makes stupid acts, stupid food makes stupid skin, stupid bed makes stupid sleep, stupid ideas makes stupid decisions, stupid clothes makes stupid appearance. Lets get rid of stupidity from our stupid short lives.
Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances.
الحياة رحلة قصيرة لايجب أن نهدرها في الحقد والكراهية والخلافات
For the first time I saw a medley of haphazard facts fall into line and order. All the jumbles and recipes and hotchpotch of the inorganic chemistry of my boyhood seemed to fit into the scheme before my eyes—as though one were standing beside a jungle and it suddenly transformed itself into a Dutch garden.[Upon hearing the Periodic Table explained in a first-tern university lecture.]
Statements of fact are after all statements, which presumes a number of questionable judgements: that those statements are worth making, perhaps more worth making than certain others, that I am the sort of person entitled to make them and perhaps able to guarantee their truth, that you are the kind of person worth making them to, that something useful is accomplished by making them, and so on.
An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other, and was not a little proud of it. "But the facts, my dear fellow," said his friend, "the facts do not agree with your theory."—"Don't they?" replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, "then, tant pis pour les faits;"—so much the worse for the facts!
Karşınızdakine katlanabilmek için onunla ilgili bazı şeyleri görmezden gelerek yaşamaktanbaşka çareniz yoktur. Tıpkı öpüşen iki kişinin buna devam edebilmek için o sırada on milyon ila bir milyar arası bakteriyi değiştiklerini bilmemeleri, ya da biliyorlarsa bunu görmezden gelmeleri gibi.
-Neden genetik?-Hmm… Çünkü takıntılı ebeveynlere hayallerindeki iBebek’leri tasarlamaları için yardım etme hayalim var. Beyaz ırk, zayıf, sarı saç, mavi göz, sağlıklı, mümkünse erkek, mümkün olsun erkek olsun lütfen doktor hanım, sayısalcı ve heteroseksüel.
The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification—judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind—essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own.
لا تسخر من خرافات الشعوب. فهذه الخرافات هي التي أصبحت بعد ذلك حقائق كبرى..
You maintain hope for humanity as an infinite skeptic of gossip and slander. In all mankind's desires for entertainment and exaggeration and sensationalism, when it comes to gossip, the individual always sounds worse than he really is. This is why adhering to gossip subtly affects the mental state of the listener - he goes on holding shady opinions regardless of where the realities of their lights and darknesses may stand.
... those selling abortion don't want them to have [the facts]," Virginia said heatedly. "Besides the Supreme Court doesn't agree with you. They judges seem to think we poor women would fall apart if we knew the facts, so they decided women don't have the right to know the full truth." She shook her head. "They've made it legal to withhold vital information, even when a woman requests it, for heaven's sake!
