Factchecker25

In Pursuit of the Elusive NPOV

"Everyone is entiled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"Don't let someone else's opinion of you become your reality." Les Brown

"Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." John F. Kennedy

"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about." H.P. Lovecraft

"Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Thomas Jefferson

“For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.” Benjamin Franklin

“Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.” E.B. White

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible” Bertrand Russell

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions." Albert Einstein

“One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.” Friedrich Nietzsche

In Support of Facts

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer." Abraham Lincoln

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams

"All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome." George Orwell

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley

"Delete the adjectives and you'll have the facts." Harper Lee

"If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right." Bernard Baruch

In Admiration of Wikipedia

"For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals." Michael Shermer

“The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.” Umberto Eco

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." Helen Keller

"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed." Napoleon Hill

"Individual commitment to a group effort is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." Vince Lombardi

"People have been known to achieve more as a result of working with others than against them." Allan Fromme