Thoughts to Build On

You can mistake an error for a fact and reach
a very wrong decision, just by failing to trace your fact
to its exact origin-as dramatized by the following story:
In the early days of the telephone, when one
had to turn a crank to ring up the operator, a man furious-
ly turned the crank every day just before noon. It seemed
that he was desperate to reach the operator at just before
noon every day to find out exactly what time it was.
Mter some weeks of courteously telling him the time
from her own watch, the operator finally asked who was
phoning. He replied importantly, "I am the man who
blows the whistle of the town factory exactly at noon."
"That's a coincidence," replied the telephone
operator, "I've been telling you the time from my watch
which 1 set by your noon whistle!"
How sure are you of your facts? The depend-
ability of the judgments upon which you will stake your
entire future depends upon your ability to separate facts
from opinions-and to reach your decisions based on
facts-facts which you can depend on because you have
traced them to their origins.