#facts

Why, Noah, do you know the word for vagina in every language?" "Because I’m European, and therefore more cultured than you. ↗

— Michelle Hodkin

#culture

The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#hostile-facts #white-noise #family

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#knowledge #hilarious

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. ↗

— Mark Twain

#more #pliable #statistics #stubborn

If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right. ↗

— Bernard Baruch

#get #judgment #right #you #your

Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. ↗

— Bernard Baruch

#every man #facts #his #man #opinion

I don't think his life has been in any way disfigured by the film. The film did disclose some difficult facts. ↗

— Martin Bashir

#been #did #difficult #disclose #facts

I don't use composers. I research music the way I research the photographs or the facts in my scripts. ↗

— Ken Burns

#facts #i #music #photographs #research

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another. ↗

— John Burroughs

#facts #imagination #imagine #one thing #thing

In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant. One motto on the show is, 'Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth.' ↗

— Stephen Colbert

#facts #going #i #ignorant #keep