"Attitudes are more important than facts"
About this Quote
The claim that attitudes outweigh facts does not deny reality; it highlights the primacy of the stance we bring to it. Facts describe; attitudes decide. Between an event and a response lies a disposition that interprets, selects, and energizes. Two people can face the same diagnosis, setback, or insult; what differs is the spirit that turns data into despair or resolve, bitterness or courage.
George MacDonald, the Victorian pastor and novelist whose tales and sermons shaped writers like C. S. Lewis, distrusted arid fact-collecting divorced from love and obedience. In his theology, truth is not a heap of propositions but a life aligned with the Good. Imagination and character are not escapes from reality; they are the faculties that let reality be received truly. Facts, for him, are signs; the heart reads them. A proud heart weaponizes facts to justify itself, while a humble, hopeful heart lets them instruct and transform. Without a right posture toward God and neighbor, even correct information can mislead, harden, and destroy.
The line also anticipates insights from modern psychology. Attention and confirmation biases show how attitude governs what we notice and what we ignore. Growth mindset research suggests that beliefs about change affect performance more than static measures of ability. Learned helplessness turns real constraints into total paralysis; a different stance does not erase constraints, but it discovers agency within them.
This is not a license for denialism. Attitude cannot make the false true or the harmful safe. MacDonalds point is finer: once facts are faced, it is attitude that determines whether they become material for repentance, invention, and reconciliation, or for resentment and retreat. In art, in ethics, in community life, the decisive question is the kind of person we are becoming as we meet what is. Cultivating humility, charity, and hope does not change the facts, but it changes what the facts can do through us.
George MacDonald, the Victorian pastor and novelist whose tales and sermons shaped writers like C. S. Lewis, distrusted arid fact-collecting divorced from love and obedience. In his theology, truth is not a heap of propositions but a life aligned with the Good. Imagination and character are not escapes from reality; they are the faculties that let reality be received truly. Facts, for him, are signs; the heart reads them. A proud heart weaponizes facts to justify itself, while a humble, hopeful heart lets them instruct and transform. Without a right posture toward God and neighbor, even correct information can mislead, harden, and destroy.
The line also anticipates insights from modern psychology. Attention and confirmation biases show how attitude governs what we notice and what we ignore. Growth mindset research suggests that beliefs about change affect performance more than static measures of ability. Learned helplessness turns real constraints into total paralysis; a different stance does not erase constraints, but it discovers agency within them.
This is not a license for denialism. Attitude cannot make the false true or the harmful safe. MacDonalds point is finer: once facts are faced, it is attitude that determines whether they become material for repentance, invention, and reconciliation, or for resentment and retreat. In art, in ethics, in community life, the decisive question is the kind of person we are becoming as we meet what is. Cultivating humility, charity, and hope does not change the facts, but it changes what the facts can do through us.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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