Fact

"1 The world is all that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things. 1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. 1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case. 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world. 1.2 The world divides into facts. 1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same."

"We can define a fact as an observation backed up by such a preponderance of evidence that no useful purpose would be served by doubting it."

"People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made."

"The educated don't get that way by memorizing facts; they get that way by respecting them."

"Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories."

"Every moment age is creeping up stealthily, but life, life is melting down like a candle that is flickering around."

"Life is withering away like a candle that is melting down."

"I have no need for the boundless sky; the moon and stars are beyond my grasp. I prefer to exist in the real world, for dreams alone cannot sustain me."

"Facts don't care about your feelings."

"One assault on the world of facts was launched some time ago from the direction of the theory of knowledge. This campaign was primarily waged by those who aimed to discredit the empiricist belief that our world consists of sense data capable of being directly perceived and uncontentiously described. It would not be too much to say that by now this particular dogma of empiricism has fallen into very general disrepute. Scarcely anyone nowadays believes in the possibility of building up structures of factual knowledge on foundations purporting to be wholly independent of our judgements."

"Besides being assailed by epistemologists, the world of facts has been undermined in recent times by developments within the theory of meaning. The cardinal assumption of positivistic philosophies of language was that all meaningful statements must refer to facts, and thus that the meanings of sentences must be given by the method of verifying the assertions contained in them."