Fact Manipulation Quotes

In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are.

For most politicians, facts lead to conclusions. For George W. Bush, conclusions lead to facts.

In a very literal way, of course, Shakespeare did change the course of history: when it didn't fit the plot he had in mind, he simply rewrote it. His English histories play fast and loose with chronology and fact to achieve the desired dramatic effect, re-ordering history even as it was then understood.

I have no problem twisting the facts if it's the only way I can be true to the moment.

Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late. Facts all come with points of view. Facts don't do what I want them to. Facts just twist the truth around. Facts are living turned inside out.

What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.

administrative purpose usually outruns the facts. Indeed the administrative official's ardor for facts usually begins when he wants to change the facts!

I got history solidly under my belt, reading Russian history and biographies. I couldn't change the facts. I could only play with how the people might have responded to the facts of their lives.

Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.

I go on Wikipedia and alter pages of animals with fake facts that I've made up about those animals.

What is becoming more interesting than the myths themselves has been the study of how the myths were constructed from sparse or unpromising facts indeed, sometimes from no facts in a kind of mute conspiracy of longing, very rarely under anybody's conscious control.

I don't want to be a slave to history or facts. As long as I'm getting a good cursory understanding of what it is and I'm not drifting too far away at certain points, then I can play with the idea and take it anywhere I want to.

What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end.

There is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the imagination.

Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.