Norman Cousins - Facts Quotes

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Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.

Norman Cousins

Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.

Norman Cousins

There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead. Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.

Norman Cousins