In the late 1970s, the Chinese had a slogan "shí shì qiú shì" meaning "Seek truth from facts". This was the credo of the reformers who from 1977 onwards began 'to set the political agenda for China after the death of Mao. It meant that facts rather than ideology should be the criterion of the 'correctness' of a policy; the policy had to work in practice. Deng Xiaoping himself had said, 'It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mouse.' Mouse-catching (expertise) is important. Pragmatism is often the best philosophical guide for successful planning.

"The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is." - Winston Churchill

"The truth depends on, or is only arrived at by, a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material." -- Coleridge

from http://sacu.org/slogans.html