E. W. Howe Quotes

I owe it to myself and to historic truth to declare that some circumstances … are founded only in conjecture and analogy.

A concept is stronger than a fact.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

Life is like an analogy.

The analysis of the thing is not the thing itself.

The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.

Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know—that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts.

We are quite at ease in this no man's land of ignorance and doubt and dispute, absorbed in the ambiguities of trying to reach truth by mixing fact with invention.

The image is an image.

A belief may be larger than a fact.

We may either proceed from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles.

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

Two elements are needed to form a truth - a fact and an abstraction.

Never confuse wishes with facts.

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?

How empty is theory in the presence of fact!

Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.

The mind revels in conjecture. Where information is lacking, it will gladly fill in the gaps.

A map is the dead body of where you've been. A map is the unborn baby of where you're going. There are no maps. Maps are pictures of what isn't.

Just because something is a metaphor doesn't mean it can't be real.

I'm not creating the universe. I'm creating a model of the universe, which may or may not be true.

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.

The map is not the territory.

Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it. I prefer to steer clear of anything aesthetic, so as not to set obstacles in my own way and not to have the problem of people saying: 'Ah, yes, that's how he sees the world, that's his interpretation.'

Imagining something is better than remembering something.