>>420515
JC
" Facts are stubborn things"
old bread
In 1770 John Adams was asked to help provide a legal defense for the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. He accepted the task knowing that his fellow colonists were hostile to the troops and his legal practice would probably suffer. His defending argument did include the famous phrase as recorded in an 1788 history book [JABM]:
I will enlarge no more on the evidence, but submit it to you, gentlemen—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: nor is the law less stable than the fact. If an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear, they had right kill in their own defence.
Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett does list the saying in its 10th edition dated 1919. Yet, John Adams is not credited [JB]:
AUTHOR: Tobias George Smollett (1721–1771)
QUOTATION: Facts are stubborn things.
ATTRIBUTION: Translation of Gil Blas. Book x. Chap. 1.
The novel Gil Blas was written by the Frenchman Alain-René Lesage, and the translation by Smollett appeared by 1748 or 1749. So the saying entered the English language by that date. But the entry in Bartlett’s book also has a footnote that points to an earlier date: Elliot: Essay on Field Husbandry, p. 35 (1747).
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/18/facts-stubborn/