Friends in the radio audience, thanks for tuning in tonight. We’re now on the second half of the lesson on accurate thinking. I wish to give you some acid tests to be used in the business of separating facts from erroneous information—this is perhaps the most important part of this entire lesson. Tonight you will learn how to assess and analyze information in order to make decisions, and how to avoid pitfalls to accurate thinking.
First of all, scrutinize with unusual care everything you read in newspapers or hear over the radio, and form the habit of never accepting any statement as fact merely because you read it or heard it expressed by someone. Statements bearing some proportion of fact often are intentionally or carelessly colored to give them an erroneous meaning. If a politician said it, for example, if you want to get at the facts, just reverse what he said, and you’ll come very near to the truth. Is that clear enough? Scrutinize carefully everything you read in books, regardless of who wrote them. Never accept the words of any writer without asking at least the following questions, and satisfying yourself as to the answers.
I’ll give you the questions in just a moment. But if you were applying this information to my books, and many of you have read them, it would apply just the same as to any other person’s books. No matter how much you may think of me, how much confidence you may have in me, there are certain ways and means by which you may test my books, the soundness of them, just as you can test the soundness of anybody else’s books or anybody else’s statements.
If you are going to pass upon the soundness of my books, however, and you weren’t sure in your own mind as to whether or not they were sound, a few statistics would help you very greatly: First of all, the fact that over 65 million people have read my books, and a large percentage of those people have expressed the fact that they were benefited by them. Second, the fact that during the past twenty-four years, the books I have written have grossed over $23,400,000, spread out over two thirds of the civilized world. Third, the fact that the information that went into those books came from five hundred of the most outstanding and successful men this country has ever known. Add the fact that the books, when finished, were passed upon by scientists who made certain that every statement in those books conformed entirely to the principles of science and to the natural laws of the universe. Those facts, plus your own application of logic as you read the books, would give you the answer.
If you wanted to go still further in determining whether my books were sound or not, then you might well make a survey of some people who had read them, and find out specifically what benefits they had received from them, and determine as you made this survey if the books or the philosophy had directly or indirectly at any time ever damaged or injured anyone. That’s how you’d go about determining whether my books are sound or not. How many of you have gone about it that way? Well, of course, I didn’t expect you to. I expected you to accept me at face value, which most of you have done. But if you really and truly wanted to check on me yourselves, that’s the way you would go about it.
Here are the steps that you should take in checking up on a writer. First of all, is the writer a recognized authority on the subject he covers? I suppose you know that there are a lot of people who write books about a great many things, and not all of them are capable of writing books, but there’s no law against it. If they can get the money with which to publish a book, print a book, or find a publisher willing to take a chance, there’s nothing to hinder anybody from writing on the subject he chooses. I judge from the books I have seen that there are a lot of people writing on many subjects that don’t have enough information to write accurately on those subjects.
Second, did the writer have an ulterior or a self-interest motive, other than that of imparting accurate information, when he wrote the book you are examining? You know that people never do anything without a motive. If you understand the motive, which prompts a man to write a book or to make a speech or to make a statement, you’ll come very near determining whether his statements, whether written or spoken, are accurate or merely guesswork, or merely opinions without proper research.
Third, you should ask the question, is the writer a paid propagandist whose profession is that of organizing public opinion? In these last twenty or twenty-five years that word “propaganda” has come to be so generally in use, and it’s done so much damage all over this world, that it behooves any person who wishes to be an accurate thinker to look carefully into any statement made by any person reflecting negatively upon the worth of our country, our form of government, our American way of life, or anything that concerns us as Americans. It behooves us to look with particular interest into the backgrounds of all such people. There are many of them expressing themselves in print, some of them very forcefully, some of them very well educated, able writers, some of them very able teachers in our colleges and universities, some of them in our churches, in the pulpits, able clergymen, indirectly and subtly teaching a philosophy, the object of which is to overthrow our great American way of life. The gullible people that have swallowed that kind of argument, it’s almost unbelievable that they would have done it. They have, in a great many instances, become gullible innocently and honestly, because they didn’t take the time to check into the background of the man doing the talking or the writing, they didn’t analyze what he said, and consequently, they accepted the opinions of other people.
The next question to ask is, has the writer a profit interest, or other interest in the subject on which he writes, which might have influenced him to make statements that were not accurate? Where money’s involved, oftentimes men can slant the truth considerably in their favor. Of course, that doesn’t happen among you businessmen, or professional men, in the studio audience. You stick strictly to the truth. You’re selling beans, and the customer wants to know if there are any rotten ones in the barrel, you tell them, “Why sure, there are a lot of them in there, but there are a lot of sound ones, too.” Or do you?
I stopped on the roadway down near Salem, Illinois, last week and bought a nice, big sack of grapefruit. It was a lovely sack, that is, the part that we could see on top. But when we got home, we found the entire layer on the bottom side of it, the side the seller didn’t show us, was rotten. So I just loaded that sack right back into my car, and when I go back to Salem next week, I’m going to take it back and make him a present of it, and tell him I’d like to see him start eating the grapefruits while I’m there, and start with the lower row—the ones he didn’t show us. You wouldn’t think a businessman would do a thing like that, but some of them do. They take the easy way, the dishonest way, the path of least resistance for the undisciplined man, and, like all rivers, they end up crooked.
Next, is the writer or the speaker a person of sound judgment, and not a fanatic on the subject on which he writes or speaks? There are a lot of fanatics loose in this world today. I suspect you hear them on the radio every now and then. They write books, too, sometimes. And if you’re going to be influenced by that type of thinking, you of course can’t class yourself as an accurate thinker, nor anything even approaching accurate thinking. You’re allowing some fellow to reach you through emotions, overcome your reason, and get you to accept his ideas. Sometimes those ideas are not injurious, and sometimes they are. A fanatic, you know, oftentimes gets a great kick out of expressing his fanaticism just to see other people wiggle and get excited. He doesn’t intend to take anything away from them; he just intends to get them stirred up.
Next, are there reasonably accessible sources from which the writer or the speaker may be checked and verified? Reasonable sources. When I first announced my plans to come into this community, there were a great many people who hadn’t heard of me before, who had never read my books. There was no reason for them to be passing judgment upon me one way or another, yet some of them did, until they made some investigation, checked into my background, checked into the record of my books, and at least some of them read the books. The ones who did the most criticizing were the ones who knew nothing about me, had never read my books, and had no information upon which to go. Who were the ones who did that marvelous thinking about me? Why, they were the ones from the other side of the railroad tracks, the ones who really needed this philosophy most, but they’ll never be able to get it. I hope they’re listening in on this program, some of them. You who did check into my background found out what I’d been doing for the past thirty-five, forty years. You passed judgment upon the philosophy itself in the final analysis, and you found it sound. You found that it worked wherever you applied it. In other words, you used accurate thinking.
Next, ascertain the writer’s or the speaker’s reputation for veracity. I suppose you know that not all people have good reputations for veracity. Especially that would apply in politics. If you’re going to be influenced by politicians at all, just remember that of all of the professions in this world where truth is lacking most, it’s in the field of politics. It used to be, back when I was a youngster growing up, that if a man were a politician—let us say if he were a congressman—he was looked up to with respect. But nowadays, if you call a man a politician, you’re liable to find yourself faced with a slander suit. Politics has come to mean a disgraceful, disreputable, unjust, unfair system of trying to get into office not on your own merits, but on the other fellow’s demerits. That’s a peculiar type of salesmanship, and a peculiar type of thinking.
Of course, there are exceptions to that rule. There are politicians who do not and would not resort to that. But the majority of them do. For that reason, you the voters, I and you owe it to ourselves and to our fellow men in dealing with politicians not to be influenced by any politician who tries to get into office by trying to tear the other fellow down.
Next, learn to be cautious and to use your own judgment, no matter who is trying to influence you. If a statement does not harmonize with your own reasoning power, and if it is out of kilter with your experience and logic, at least hold it up for further examination. Don’t move on it until you get more information. Falsehood has a queer way of bringing with it some form of warning note, perhaps in the tone of the voice of the one bringing it. This, when it is recognized, is known as intuition. Isn’t that a strange thing, that falsehood has a queer way of bringing with it, in whatever form it’s expressed, a warning note?
I can truthfully tell you that in all of my life, despite the number of people in whom I have been disappointed, I have never been fooled by anyone about anything. Oftentimes, for instance, in employing business managers—I’ve had about ten business managers—and they nearly all went bad. They were more interested in doing me for something than they were doing something for me. In those instances, that warning note came when I was interviewing these managers before I employed them. But I was in need of a man, and I took the nearest man at hand, not because I had full confidence in him, but because I hoped that my inner warning would turn out to be false, and that he would be all right. But it rarely did work out that way.
If you’ll watch yourself in business transactions and in social situations, you’ll find that a warning note always comes with the falsehood. I can’t tell you how to detect it; you can only tell that yourself. Women usually know more about that than men. I’ve heard it said that in courtship, women don’t pay so much attention to what men say as they do to the way they say it. Is that correct, ladies, or not? I think it is correct. It’s not so much what the man says, it’s the way he says it that telegraphs to the woman, women having a much keener sense of intuition than men, whether the man is lying or trying to make a good impression, or whether he’s sincere.
When I want to find out about men, I always take my wife, Annie Lou, along with me. She has a very keen sense of intuition. I connive to turn her loose with the man about whom I wish to know a great deal, and let her talk with him a little while. She always comes back and gives me the lowdown on him. I’ve never known her to be wrong about it.
Most women have a very keen sense of intuition, but many women don’t always allow themselves to be guided by that sense of intuition. They very often override it. When they do, they generally get into trouble. I think you can confirm that, too, ladies.
In seeking facts from others, and here is a humdinger, do not disclose to them what facts you wish to find because many people have the habit of trying to please, even if they have to fabricate or exaggerate. You stop any person you wish and ask that person the way to some small, out of the way place, and he’ll point right down the road and say, “Well, it’s right down there, about two miles, and then you turn to the right two miles, and then you go two miles farther on, and there it is.” As a matter of fact, it might be that the place is back in the other direction, but he will never tell you that he doesn’t know. He’ll always give you the information.
Most people are like that: They don’t want to admit that they don’t know. When they find out what answer you expect, there is a common trait, a common weakness, in people to try to give you the answer you’re looking for. Remember that. Remember that if you really and truly wish information, don’t give the person from whom you are seeking it the slightest idea as to what you think he’s going to say. Then he, having nothing to guide him, will slip up and maybe give you the truth.
This all comes under the heading of accurate thinking. Science is the art of organizing and classifying facts. When you wish to make sure you’re dealing with facts, seek scientific sources for their testing wherever possible. Men of science have neither a reason nor the inclination to modify or change facts, nor to misrepresent. The scientists are the most accurate thinkers in the world, because they are searching for whatever is there, not for what they would like to find there.
When Madame Curie started out in search of radium, when nobody knew what radium was like, they didn’t know how many molecules to the atom, they didn’t know where to look for it; she started out with an open mind. If she hadn’t had an open mind, she never would have discovered the existence of radium. She went on the hypothesis through inductive reasoning that there must be a metal known as radium, and by following certain principles of science she eventually isolated that metal and brought it into captivity.
Another thing about accurate thinking: Your emotions are not always reliable. As a matter of fact, they’re generally ninety-five percent unreliable. That has to do with all of your emotions, negative and positive. Before being influenced too far by your feelings, give your head a chance to pass judgment on the business at hand. The head is more dependable than the heart. The person who forgets this generally regrets it.
Here are some of the major enemies of sound thinking: At the head of the list—you would never guess this—but at the head of the list, the most outstanding enemy of accurate thinking is the greatest of all the emotions, the emotion of love. If you’re going to be an accurate thinker, you’ll have to tie a string on each end of your heart and hold on to both of those strings at all times. If you fall down in your overzealous expression of the emotion of love, be sure that you don’t let loose of both of those strings, that you at least hold on to one of them. Some people, when they give way to the feeling of love, they go off the deep end, they go overboard, and some of them never come up for air. It’s pitiful, isn’t it, that the greatest of all the emotions can be and often is the most dangerous of all.
The emotion of love is never dangerous to an accurate thinker. In all of my life—and I have had plenty of love affairs, you may be sure of that; might as well confess it now—I’ve had plenty of them. But in all of my life, I never got hurt but once, and I don’t think I ever hurt anybody but once. The time that I got hurt was when I went off the deep end and forgot to hold on to that other string. I went overboard completely, and it cost me. It cost me at least a million dollars in cash; that’s quite an item. Fortunately, I had the wherewithal to pay up. But that was nothing in comparison with the sorrow and the grief and what it did to me. It took me five years to recover, to get back to where I started from. This is a part of my background that you haven’t heard about, I guess. But you might as well hear it, and you might as well know that it can happen to anybody. With all of my ability to use self-discipline, I overlooked because I chose to overlook. I wanted to have one love experience in my life with a dangerous person, and ladies and gentlemen, I had it. And I want to tell you something more: It was worth it. It was worth it because I recovered and learned from it.
Honest, confession is good for the soul. It’s worth it in many ways. First of all, I learned not to do it again. Second, I learned that I was strong enough, despite the fact that I had given way to the most outstanding and influencing of the emotions, to regain my equilibrium and my reasoning. It would be impossible for anybody to come along and play that trick on me again. As a matter of fact, nobody played it on me; I played it on myself. I jumped off the deep end. I wanted to see what it was like. I’d had every other experience, practically. I wanted to see what it was like to be let down in a love affair—and brother, I got it. A million dollars’ worth.
Some of the other major enemies of accurate thinking are hatred and anger and jealousy and fear and revenge and greed and vanity and egotism and the desire for something for nothing and procrastination. You’ll never do any accurate thinking when you’re angry—just remember that. You’ll never be an accurate thinker as long as you allow any of these emotions, the constructive, the positive, or the negative, to take possession of you. Accurate thinking is a very cold-blooded business, ladies and gentlemen. Very cold-blooded. It’s done with your head, not with your heart.
I wouldn’t want to be a person who didn’t give expression to his heart; why, I’d be a human automaton. I don’t mean that you should shut off your finer emotions, nor any of your emotions entirely, but I do say that you can use self-discipline to keep all of those emotions under control at all times. When it comes to the point at which you need to be cold-blooded in order to think and to deal with facts instead of letting your emotions rule you, that’s when you want to put on the pressure of self-discipline, and let your head do the thinking, not your heart.
Love is the greatest thing in the world, beyond any question of a doubt. There would be no civilization without it. Man would be nothing but an animal without it. By the same token, it’s the most dangerous of all of the emotions if you are not an accurate thinker. I suspect there are people in this audience who could say amen to that.
Then there is religious fanaticism—that’s an enemy to accurate thinking. If you do not approach your religion by the more practical means of determining its soundness and its usefulness to you, if you approach it from the viewpoint of the fanatic, you’ll never be an accurate thinker.
In politics, fanaticism is detrimental to accurate thinking. I happen to have had the privilege of working very closely with Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first term as president. There were some of us in his confidence who believed that he was sent direct from heaven during that first term. Then again, there were some others who believed that he came from another place. And in each case, the thinking was not necessarily based upon knowledge of the man so much as it was the way they felt about what he was doing. Fanaticism. And if you want to find it rampant, you’ll find it in the field of religion and in the field of politics, more than in any other place. And next to that, in the field of economics.
The only thing over which you have complete control is the power of thought. Do not give up this prerogative right to anyone, for any purpose whatsoever. Uncontrolled enthusiasm and imagination are also dangerous to the business of thinking accurately. Keep a close watch on these two especially. They are dangerous when not under your control.
It’s a wonderful thing to have enthusiasm; as a matter of fact, I don’t know anything great that was ever accomplished without enthusiasm behind it. It’s a marvelous thing to have an imagination, to picture a thing mentally before you create it or before you see it in its physical form. If it had not been for enthusiasm and imagination, the great American way of life as we know it today, with all of our conveniences, all of our riches, would not be in existence. The Indians would still be here running this country—and maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, after all, if they were. That’s where you’re supposed to applaud.
Last but not least, to be an accurate thinker let your mind be an eternal question mark. Question everything and everyone until you satisfy yourself that you are dealing with facts. Do this quietly, in the silence of your own mind, and avoid being known as a doubting Thomas. Be a good listener, but also be an accurate thinker as you listen.
I see that we are out of time. Thank you, and good night.