Facts Quotes - Page 27

• In the eternal lazy morning of the Pacific, days slip away into months, months into years; the seasons are reduced to the faintest nuance by the great central fact of the sunshine; one might pass a lifetime, it seems, between two yawns, lying bronzed and naked in the sand.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Morning, Lying, Sunshine

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• The totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Cases, Determine, Totality

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2012). “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, p.29, Courier Corporation

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• To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  God, Believe, Mean

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1984). “Notebooks, 1914-1916”, p.57, University of Chicago Press

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• The world divides into facts.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  World, Divides

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2012). “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, p.29, Courier Corporation

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• To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Believe, Mean, World

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1984). “Notebooks, 1914-1916”, p.57, University of Chicago Press

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• I hate symbolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory -- a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral truth.

  Luigi Pirandello

  Art, Hate, Order

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• We accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think - only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.

  Alan Watts

  Eye, Heart, Thinking

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, (p. 112), 1966.

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• Women watched for the spectacular performances of the men, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the presence of an audience is a very important factor in shaping the men's behavior. In fact, it is probable that the men are more exhibitionistic because the women admire their performances. Conversely, there can be no doubt that the spectacular behavior is a stimulus which summons the audience together, promoting in the women the appropriate behavior.

  Gregory Bateson

  Men, Doubt, Important

  "Gregory Bateson: the legacy of a scientist". Book by David Lipset, 1982.

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• No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatic of particular instances.

  Gregory Bateson

  Levels, Matter, Environment

  "Steps to an Ecology of Mind". Book by Gregory Bateson, 1972.

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• Where are these rational practices to be taught and acquired? Not within the four walls of a bare building, in which formality predominates... But in the nursery, play-ground, fields, gardens, workshops, manufactures, museums and class-rooms. ...The facts collected from all these sources will be concentrated, explained, discussed, made obvious to all, and shown in their direct application to practice in all the business of life.

  Robert Owen

  Wall, Garden, Class

  "The Book of the New Moral World, Vol. 3". Book by Robert Owen, 1836-1844.

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• The sport [football] is simply more and more identified with violence, both in its inherent nature and in its savage personnel... [The National Football League] now needs a guardian, not a CEO.

  Frank Deford

  Sports, Football, League

  "Football Needs A Guardian, Not A CEO". "Morning Edition", www.npr.org. July 09, 2013.

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• I have little hesitation in saying that as a result a sickly pall now hangs over the big bang theory. As I have mentioned earlier, when a pattern of facts becomes set against a theory, experience shows that it rarely recovers.

  Fred Hoyle

  Bangs, Patterns, Littles

  "The Intelligent Universe". Book by Fred Hoyle (Page 186), 1983.

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• Economic man and the Calvinist Christian sing to each other like voices in a fugue. The Calvinist stands alone before an almost merciless God; no human agency can help him; his church is a means to political and social organization rather than a bridge to deity, for no priest can have greater knowledge of the divine way than he himself; no friend can console him - in fact, he should distrust all men; in the same fashion, Economic Man faces a merciless world alone and unaided, his hand against every other's.

  Lionel Trilling

  Christian, Fashion, Mean

  "Matthew Arnold". Book by Lionel Trilling, 1949.

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• In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn't develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote "with his blood," and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one's lifeblood. It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned.

  Georges Bataille

  Believe, Book, Mean

  "On Nietzsche". Book by Georges Bataille, pp. xxiv-xxv, 1945.

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• An intention that rejects what has no meaning in fact is a rejection of the entirety of being.

  Georges Bataille

  Rejection, Intention, Rejects

  Georges Bataille (2004). “On Nietzsche”, p.27, A&C Black

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• Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost ... perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well.

  Philip K. Dick

  Truth, Men, Littles

  Philip K. Dick (2011). “A Scanner Darkly”, p.193, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest...

  James Branch Cabell

  Race, Order, Romance

  "The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions". Book by James Branch Cabell, 1917.

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• I don't think victory over death... is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold; a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and a victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was.

  Vera Brittain

  Men, Thinking, Victory

  Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain (1960). “Selected letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, 1920-1935”

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• As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people - the underlying value of that which is traditional, of that which is prescriptive.

  Enoch Powell

  Clever, People, Important

  Enoch Powell's Speech in the House of Commons, api.parliament.uk. November 19, 1968.

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• I refer to the misunderstanding of Soviet Russia as an aggressive power, militaristically and ideologically bent upon world domination 'seeing', to quote a recent speech of the British Prime Minister, 'the rest of the world as its rightful fiefdom.' How any rational person, viewing objectively the history of the last thirty-five years, could entertain this 'international misunderstanding' challenges, if it does not defeat, comprehension. The notion has no basis in fact... If Russia is bent on world conquest, she has been remarkably slothful and remarkably unsuccessful.

  Enoch Powell

  Years, Russia, Challenges

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• You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.

  Edward Albee

  Jobs, Stupid, Mean

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.145, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do.

  Edward Albee

  Attention, Pay, Gains

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.176, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.

  Matsuo Basho

  Loneliness, Unhappy, Made

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• When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Two, Together

  Thomas Hobbes (2010). “Leviathan, Parts I and II - Revised Edition”, p.78, Broadview Press

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• Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another: by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like, another time

  Thomas Hobbes

  Know How, Another Time, Knows

  Thomas Hobbes (2016). “The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition”, p.28, Hackett Publishing

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