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As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact.
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
You appear to be astonished, he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.
To forget it!
You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
But the Solar System! I protested.
What the deuce is it to me? he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.
This is Watson describing one of his earliest conversations with Sherlock Holmeshttp://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DoyScar.html
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Study in Scarlet, November, 1887
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Facts are the most important thing in business. Study facts and do more than is expected of you.
-Frederick Hudson Ecker
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Accuracy of statement is one of the first elements of truth; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood.
-Tryon Edwards
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Facts are God's arguments; we should be careful never to misunderstand or pervert them.
-Tryon Edwards
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If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
-Albert Einstein
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In the spider-web of facts, many a truth is strangled.
-Paul Eldridge
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Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
-George Eliot
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If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
-William Faulkner
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Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.
-Francois FeNelon
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While I am busy with little things, I am not required to do greater things.
-St. Francis De Sales
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To some lawyers, all facts are created equal.
-Felix Frankfurter
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Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.
-Thomas Fuller
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Anyone who knows a strange fact shares in its singularity.
-Jean Genet
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The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.
-Edward Gibbon
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A concept is stronger than a fact.
-Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Details often kill initiative, but there have been few successful men who weren't good at details. Don't ignore details. Lick them.
-William B. Given
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The facts: nothing matters but the facts: worship of the facts leads to everything, to happiness first of all and then to wealth.
-Edmond de Goncourt
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In a major matter no details are small.
-Paul De Gondi
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Books about Facts
