Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

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

Happily I had very early learned the fallacy of building much on logic and verbal argument. Single sets of truths I knew to be as little conclusive in theology as in physics; and, in one as in the other, no theory to be worth anything, however plausibly backed up with Scripture texts or facts, which was not gathered bona fide from the analysis of all the attainable phenomena, and verified wherever possible by experiment.

When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

There are two worlds: the world we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.

Rhetoric is cheap, evidence comes more dearly.

Facts are better than dreams.

Never confuse wishes with facts.

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.

What's important is that twice two is four and all the rest's nonsense.

Illusions... are simple facts, but they have been created by the mind, by the spirit, and they are one of the justifications of the new spatial configuration.

The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists exists; what is is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality–it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see." -Richard

Facts - behind them lies the whole fabric of deductive truth.

The impossible is justified by the fact that it occurred

Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales

The truth is rarely true and never simple.

Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!

Science is the most reliable guide in life.

The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.

Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can.

We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason, if this ever becomes a reasonable world.

Everyone has been a witness sometime - It doesn't change it if you don't believe.

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.

Whenever men have looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination.