Daily Inspiration Quote by George MacDonald

MacDonald is poking at a Victorian faith in “facts” as moral alibis. In an era drunk on cataloging, measuring, and classifying - the age of Darwin debates, industrial progress, and confident pulpits - he tilts the axis: the decisive force in human life isn’t what you can prove, it’s how you stand toward what you know. Facts, for him, are inert. Attitudes are active; they steer perception, shape conscience, and ultimately decide what a person will do with the evidence in front of them.

The line works because it sounds almost scandalous in its simplicity. It refuses the comforting idea that correct information automatically produces correct behavior. MacDonald, a novelist steeped in Christian moral imagination, is less interested in knowledge as possession than in knowledge as posture. Two people can share the same “facts” about poverty, illness, or a neighbor’s failure and reach opposite conclusions because one approaches with contempt and the other with mercy. The subtext is an indictment: we hide behind data to avoid responsibility for our temperament, our biases, our willingness to love.

There’s also a quiet warning to the self-styled rationalist. Facts can be weaponized, cherry-picked, or used to freeze the heart while keeping the brain spotless. Attitude is the unseen editor of reality - the thing that decides which facts matter, which ones get ignored, and what kind of person you become in the sorting.