Daily Inspiration Quote by David Seabury

A psychologist’s version of a raised eyebrow: “The fact, if they are there, speak for themselves.” Seabury builds the whole line around a conditional trapdoor. Facts don’t need a sales pitch, he implies, but only if they actually exist. That “if” is the point. It’s not a celebration of objectivity so much as a warning about how eagerly people label their hunches as evidence.

The phrasing is slyly prosecutorial. “The fact” arrives singular and definite, as if we’re about to be handed something solid. Then Seabury undercuts it with “if they are there,” shifting from singular to plural and from certainty to doubt. The grammar performs the psychology: our minds crave a clean, authoritative “fact,” but when pressed, we produce a haze of “they” - impressions, anecdotes, vibes - and hope the room won’t notice.

In Seabury’s era, psychology was busy trying to professionalize itself: separating measurement from moralizing, observation from ideology, therapy from parlor wisdom. This line reads like a disciplinary boundary marker. It’s an admonition to clinicians, writers, and everyday arguers who dress up interpretations as data. If you have evidence, you don’t need theatrics. If you’re leaning on rhetoric, you might be covering an evidentiary vacancy.

The subtext is almost modern: in a culture of hot takes, the calmest flex is to shut up and let the receipts do the talking - and to recognize when there are no receipts at all.