The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability.We say that a sentence isfactually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to 44 verify the proposition which it purports to express ö that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false.

-Ayer, SirAlfred Jules
  Language, Truth and Logic, ch.1

Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact.

-Barnes, Djuna
  Doctor. Nightwood, ch.5.

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if theyare, the fiction parts should be printed in red ink, the fact parts in black ink.

-Bowen, Catherine Shober ne¤  e Drinker
  In Publisher's Weekly, 24 Mar. Bowen's biographies were frequently partly fictionalized.

It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him.

-Carlyle,Thomas
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic,'The Hero as Divinity' (published1897).

This world is bad enough maybe; We do not comprehend it; But in one fact can all agree God won't, and we can't mend it.

-Clough, Arthur Hugh
  Dipsychus (published1865), sc.5.

To be an American is an ideal, whileto be a Frenchman is a fact.

-Friedrich, Carl J(oachim)
  In Time, 9 Nov.

Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

-Fuller, R(ichard) Buckminster
  Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, ch.4.

Fact is stranger than fiction.You see people walking down the street that would never be allowed on television.You have to tone it down.

-Gervais, Ricky
  On the  Jo Whiley show, BBC Radio1, 30 Sep.

C'est de la'   que vient tout le mal: Dieu est un homme. All evil comes from this fact: God is a man.

-Giraudoux, (Hippolyte) Jean
  Sodome et Gomorrhe, act1, sc.2.

Science is the knowledge of consequences and the dependence of one fact upon another.

-Hobbes,Thomas
Leviathan, pt.1, ch.5.

All theobjects of humanreasonorenquiry maynaturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact.

-Hume, David
  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 4, pt.1.

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence? No.Commit itthen tothe flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

-Hume, David
  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section12, pt.3.

   Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

-Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)
  Letter to Charles Kingsley.

   The great tragedy of Scienceöthe slaying of a beautiful hypothesis byan ugly fact.

-Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)
  'Biogenesis and  Abiogenesis', in the British  Association Annual Report.

Next tobeing right inthis world, thebest of all things isto be clearly and definitely wrong. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutelyand thoroughlyand persistently wrong you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking yourheadagainstafact, andthat setsyouallstraightagain.

-Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)
Attributed.

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, themost self-conscious people inthe world, and themost addictedtothebeliefthattheothernations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them.

-James, Henry
  Hawthorne, ch.6.

Negative Capability; that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

-Keats,John
  Letter to G and T Keats, 21 Dec.

The news of the dayas it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper isinall literalnessthebibleofdemocracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.

-Lippmann,Walter
  Liberty and the News,'What Modern Liberty Means'.

   That would have been a nice place, inside an idea, but it wasn't a place to live. It was necessary to live where the idea and the fact collided.

-McIlvanney,William Angus
  The Big Man, ch.8.

The most striking of all the impressions that I have formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through this continent.Whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

-Stockton
  Speech to the South  African Parliament, 3 Feb.