Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.

The saying contrasts two kinds of evidence: “facts,” imagined as hard, resistant realities, and “statistics,” which can be selected, framed, or manipulated to support competing arguments. Its bite comes from suggesting that numerical authority is not automatically truth; figures can be made persuasive through choices about what to count, how to categorize, what baseline to use, and which comparisons to highlight. The line has become a staple caution in politics, journalism, and social science: quantitative claims may look objective while still reflecting bias, incomplete data, or rhetorical intent. Read this way, it is less anti-math than anti-misuse—an admonition to scrutinize methods and context rather than defer to numbers as inherently decisive.