It’s not the evidence you find that matters, but the evidence you find inconvenient.
From Gray Matters, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
Switch spent the better part of the morning proving the big hickory had been robbed, and by a jay, and he had the facts: a jay was seen, the cache was short, jays take things. When I pointed at the hole he himself dug in October, two trunks over, he said that was a different hole. I used to think the work was gathering enough of the stuff, that a man with a full crop of facts could not go wrong. But I have watched myself sort a morning's evidence into two piles without once admitting there were two piles. It's not the evidence you find that matters, but the evidence you find inconvenient. The jay came back at noon and sat there looking guilty, which proves nothing, and I wrote it down anyway.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Count double the thoughts that precede your actions, half the ones that follow.
- When people say they want to feel better, they usually mean they want to feel less.
- What is spoken barely hints at what is shuttered in.
- If you give a reason for what you’re doing, you’re doing it for a different reason.
- Leap to a conclusion and you usually fall short.
- When you are not sure where you are going, you are more likely to keep your eyes open.