Abraham Flexner Quotes

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".

You do not have to imagine things; reality gives you all you need.

How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?

The world divides into facts.

The mind does not create what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose.

Don't ignore the five senses in search of a sixth.

All appearances are real and negatio; sophistical: All reality must be sensation.

The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?

Drawing is what you see of the world, truly see...And sometimes what you see is so deep in your head you're not even sure of what you're seeing. But when it's down there on paper, and you look at it, really look, you'll see the way things are...that's the world, isn't it? You have to keep looking to find the truth.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

I try to find the picture, not create it.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

There are some things that are real, that you can see, that you can observe, like the moon, and grass and things. But for ideas to become real, they have to be played on your senses.

You must see first before you can believe.

What you see is what you see.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

We live on the leash of our senses.

No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

I go with what I know and what I see, and I believe in reality.

The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.

Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it's there it doesn't require your belief- and if it's not there why should you believe in it?

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.