Leonard Henry Courtney Quotes

There are three kind of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

We spend our time bandying statistics about.

Figures won’t lie but liars will figure.

John Chancellor said he could remember a time when arguments could be settled by government statistics. Today, nobody’s statistics can be trusted.

Rumor is rarely more interesting than fact, but it is always more readily available.

Sometimes the truth is stupid.

Every expression of truth has in it the seeds of propagation, even as the sun cannot hide its light.

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.

Facts speak plainer than words

I shall speak facts; but some will say I deal in fiction.

Who has time to make up stories when the truth is so much more interesting?

Above all else show the data.

The facts are to blame, my friend. We are all imprisoned by facts: I was born, I exist.

I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.

You know, a few months ago, I made a terrible mistake. I realized something, and instead of crushing the thought the moment it came I... I let it hang on, and now I know it to be true. And I'm afraid it's stuck in my head forever. These are the best days of our lives. It's a terrible thing to know, but I know it.

Surveys show that surveys never lie.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

The usefulest truths are the plainest.

How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head?

Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,--a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

Some truths are truths, no matter who says them.

If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.