The Fortean Collection Quotes

“Science is a turtle that says that its own shell encloses all things.”
― Charles Fort, The Fortean Collection: The Book of The Damned, New Lands, LO!, Wild Talents, The Outcast Manufacturers

“Collective hallucination is another of the dismissal-labels by which conventionalists shirk thinking. Here is another illustration of the lack of standards, in phenomenal existence, by which to judge anything. One man's story, if not to the liking of conventionalists, is not accepted, because it is not supported; and then testimony by more than one is not accepted, if undesirable, because that is collective hallucination. In this kind of jurisprudence, there is no hope for any kind of testimony against the beliefs in which conventional scientists agree. Among their amusing disregards is that of overlooking that, quite as truly may their own agreements be collective delusions.”
― Charles Fort, The Fortean Collection: The Book of The Damned, New Lands, LO!, Wild Talents, The Outcast Manufacturers

“Call it swoon, or call it hypnosis--but that it is never absolute, and that all of us sometimes have awareness of our condition, and moments of wondering what it's all about and why we do and think the things that sometimes we wake up and find ourselves doing and thinking. Upon”
― Charles Fort, The Fortean Collection: The Book of The Damned, New Lands, LO!, Wild Talents, The Outcast Manufacturers

“what we call existence is a womb of infinitude, and is itself only incubatory—that eventually all attempts are broken down by the falsely excluded.”
― Charles Fort, The Fortean Collection: The Book of The Damned, New Lands, LO!, Wild Talents, The Outcast Manufacturers

“If the basic fallacies, or the absence of base, in every specialization of thought can be seen by the units of its opposition, why then we see that all supposed foundations in our whole existence are myths, and that all discussion and supposed progress are the conflicts of phantoms and the overthrow of old delusions by new delusions. Nevertheless”
― Charles Fort, The Fortean Collection: The Book of The Damned, New Lands, LO!, Wild Talents, The Outcast Manufacturers

“I think we're all bugs and mice, and are only different expressions of an all-inclusive cheese.”
― Charles Fort, The Fortean Collection: The Book of The Damned, New Lands, LO!, Wild Talents, The Outcast Manufacturers

“It seems to me that, very strikingly here, is borne out the general acceptance that ours is only an intermediate existence, in which there is nothing fundamental, or nothing final to take as a positive standard to judge by. Peasants believed in meteorites. Scientists excluded meteorites. Peasants believe in "thunderstones." Scientists exclude "thunderstones." It is useless to argue that peasants are out in the fields, and that scientists are shut up in laboratories and lecture rooms. We cannot take for a real base that, as to phenomena with which they are more familiar, peasants are more likely to be right than are scientists: a host of biologic and meteorologic fallacies of peasants rises against us.”
― Charles Fort, The Fortean Collection: The Book of The Damned, New Lands, LO!, Wild Talents, The Outcast Manufacturers