Charles Fort famous quotes

My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences?
-- Charles Fort

#Thinking #What If #Pseudo

People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.
-- Charles Fort

#Believe #People #Needs

Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores. Other times I have joys, when unexpectedly coming upon an outrageous story that may not be altogether a lie, or upon a macabre little thing that may make some reviewer of my more or less good works mad. But always there is present a feeling of unexplained relations of events that I note, and it is this far-away, haunting, or often taunting, awareness, or suspicion, that keeps me piling on.
-- Charles Fort

#Lying #Data #Mad

Almost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly.
-- Charles Fort

#Hypnosis #People #Deceit

I think, therefore I'm going to have breakfast.
-- Charles Fort

#Thinking #Breakfast

Do you want power over something? Be more nearly real than it.
-- Charles Fort

#Real #Want

If any spiritualistic medium can do stunts, there is no more need for special conditions than there is for a chemist to turn down lights, start operations with a hymn, and ask whether there's any chemical present that has affinity with something named Hydrogen.
-- Charles Fort

#Light #Hymns #Special

[Wise men] have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.
-- Charles Fort

#Wise #Art #Stars

I shut the front door upon Christ and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and periwinkles. I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written. I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject-matter for beliefs.
-- Charles Fort

#Believe #Doors #Hands

Existence is Appetite: the gnaw of being; the one attempt of all things to assimilate to some higher attempt.
-- Charles Fort

#Appetite #Existence #Higher

When we come upon assurances that a mystery has been solved, we go on investigating.
-- Charles Fort

#Goes On #Mystery #Assurance

If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.
-- Charles Fort

#Tree #Growth #Foundation

The history of science is a record of the transformations of contempts amd amusements.
-- Charles Fort

#Science #Records #Amusement

A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.
-- Charles Fort

#Mean #Data

I have taken the stand that nobody can be always wrong, but it does seem to me that I have approximated so highly that I am nothing short of a negative genius.
-- Charles Fort

#Taken #Science #Errors

There is not a physicist in the world who can perceive when a parlor magician palms off playing-cards.
-- Charles Fort

#Cards #World #Parlor

It is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that which won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't stay damed; that salvation only precedes perdition.
-- Charles Fort

#Expression #Heaven #Hell

Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts.
-- Charles Fort

#Octopus #Way #Stumps

Against all the opposition in the world, I make this statement - that once I knew a magician. I was a witness of a performance that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic.
-- Charles Fort

#Mean #Magic #World

The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open.
-- Charles Fort

#Fate #Doors #Explanation

The outrageous is the reasonable, if introduced politely.
-- Charles Fort

One can't learn much and also be comfortable One can't learn much and let anybody else be comfortable
-- Charles Fort

I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.
-- Charles Fort

#Philosophy #Science #Science Religion

If there is a true universal mind, must it be sane?
-- Charles Fort

#Mind #Sane

Science of to-day-the superstition of to-morrow. Science of to-morrow-the superstition of to-day.
-- Charles Fort

#Science #Superstitions #Morrow

One can't be of an enquiring and experimental nature, and still be very sensible.
-- Charles Fort

#Mind #Sensible #Stills

Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores.
-- Charles Fort

#Data #Mind #Sometimes

But Truth is that besides which there is nothing: nothing to modify it, nothing to question it, nothing to form an exception: the all-inclusive, the complete - By Truth, I mean the Universal.
-- Charles Fort

#Truth #Mean #Form

In measuring a circle, one begins anywhere.
-- Charles Fort

#Circles #Measuring

The fittest survive. What is meant by the fittest? Not the strongest; not the cleverest - weakness and stupidity everywhere survive. There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive. 'Fitness,' then, is only another name for 'survival.' Darwinism: That survivors survive.
-- Charles Fort

#Names #Stupidity #Survival

Peasants have believed in dowsing, and scientists used to believe that dowsing was only a belief of peasants. Now there are so many scientists who believe in dowsing that the suspicion comes to me that it may only be a myth after all.
-- Charles Fort

#Believe #May #Belief

The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property.
-- Charles Fort

#Earth #Property

I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written.
-- Charles Fort

#Believe #I Believe

The ideal state is meekness, or humility, or the semi-invalid state of the old. Year after year I am becoming nobler and nobler. If I can live to be decrepit enough, I shall be a saint.
-- Charles Fort

#Humility #Years #Saint

All biologic phenomena act to adjust: there are no biologic actions other than adjustments. Adjustment is another name for Equilibrium. Equilibrium is the Universal, or that which has nothing external to derange it.
-- Charles Fort

#Names #Action #Equilibrium

The theologians have recognized that the ideal is the imitation of God. If we be a part of such an organic thing, this thing is God to us, as I am God to the cells that compose me.
-- Charles Fort

#Cells #Imitation #Theologian

Venus de Milo. To a child she is ugly. When a mind adjusts to thinking of her as a completeness, even though, by physiologic standards, incomplete, she is beautiful.
-- Charles Fort

#Beautiful #Children #Thinking

All would be well. All would be heavenly--If the damned would only stay damned.
-- Charles Fort

#Would Be #Wells #Heavenly