Thomas Paine Quotes

A thousand probabilities don't make one fact.

Facts are placed before reasonings and before ideals, even though the reasonings and the ideals be more beautiful, be seemingly more lofty, be seemingly better, be seemingly truer. The seemingly absurd and the seemingly impossible are sometimes true. The scientific disposition is to accept facts upon evidence, however absurd they may appear to our pre-conceptions.

When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

Facts are more mundane than fantasies, but a better basis for conclusions.

Even if all parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the probable need not necessarily be the truth and the truth not always probable.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

Ground not upon dreams; you know they are ever contrary.

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it.

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

These are facts, these are not imaginary things.

I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.

The best way to win an argument is to begin by being right.

If all you have is faith, then you never actually know anything.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty.

Knowledge consists in understanding the evidence that establishes the fact, not in the belief that it is a fact.

My colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations.

Facts are better than dreams.

Opinions should not be allowed to become conclusions

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.