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. Uno… - Norman Cousins

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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.

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About Norman Cousins

Norman Cousins (June 24, 1915 - November 30, 1990) was an Adjunct Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of California and a prominent world federalist leader. He became executive editor (and then editor-in-chief) of the Saturday Review of Literature; under his leadership, circulation increased from 20,000 to 650,000. Cousins later served as President of the World Federalist Association.

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