Isaac Watts Quotes

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

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

The facts, if they are there, speak for themselves.

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.

A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proved.

The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.

We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.

We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.

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".

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

Supposing is good, but finding out is better.

Science begets knowledge; opinion, ignorance.

[Science is] the literature of truth.

We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

Because a known fact is better than an unknown fact.

No authority is higher than reality.

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.

Science is facts.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the later ignorance.

Science is knowledge arranged and classified according to truth, facts, and the general laws of nature.

I often wish... that I could rid the world of the tyranny of facts. What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.

Knowledge goes hand and hand with truth.

Facts are not the truth. They only indicate where the truth may lie.

Facts are better than dreams.

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.