Letting the facts speak for themselves is an immoral principle when we all know that facts and figures can be selected to prove anything.
The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.
What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.
One can shape history as much through the facts one omits as through the facts one includes.
One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.
Incongruous information is discarded, and supporting information is eagerly retained. Our memory actually ends up skewed: we are better able to process and recall the facts that we are motivated to process and recall, while conveniently forgetting those that we would prefer weren't true.
The creative act does not create something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, and skills.
The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about.
You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.
Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.
Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.
How is it appropriate for a judge ever to say that they will choose to see some facts and not others?
Research is about following the gleam into the dark. It's also about being sensitive enough to know which fact is "the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders," as opposed to the fact that deadens and kills a delicate new project.
When we know what we want to prove, we go out and find our facts. They are always there.
The proverbial notion of historical distance consists in our having lost ninety-five of every hundred original facts, so the remaining ones can be arranged however one likes.
