Get your facts first, then you can distort them later

Get your facts first, then you can distort them later, by Mark Twain.  Ah, Mark Twain, the man is full of witty and funny wisdoms.  In this case his quote here is about politicians, charlatans, or even an author or two.  The idea is simple, get all the information you can.  Educate yourself as much as possible so that you know more than others or at least more than you knew about a subject yesterday.  Now you can use this information to advance yourself, or, more importantly, know when others are trying to distort the facts.  That is the essence of the quote.  You should know and learn anything and everything you can, for otherwise people can take what you do not know and manipulate you.  No one likes to manipulated, and sure, by knowing your own facts you can potentially manipulate others, but you have morals.  You have the character to not do something so foul (right?).  

Final Thought:  Twain gave us a simple quote on knowledge and manipulation of knowledge, and then we think.  At that point we truly understand that knowledge is power and we can have knowledge over ourselves and others.  It is up to us to prevent power over ourselves from being stolen through the manipulation of the facts, a lesson I re-iterate multiple times in multiple issues in my little blog here.  In fact I purposely make sure everyone knows when they read my blog that this is all opinion based on information.  Opinion is not fact and thus should be questioned and discussed.  I do not want my blog to become a source for information other than the fact that it is my opinion.  Instead I like it to be used as a window to say, is he right?  Let me look this up.  I never want you my readers to be used by anyone, and especially not even myself, so I will always invite questions, debate and discussion, for through those we can eventually find the truth.