ContraPoints Quotes

I like reading things where someone's looked at what I do with some honesty, and maybe been challenged by it, and they have something to say that shows they've thought about it, even if they don't necessarily like it.

Poking fun at other people's beliefs, while it may seem frivolous and offensive, is a non-negotiable right. It is a principle that underpins free speech, the basis for progress.

I think it's interesting to me to talk to people who don't agree with me all the time.

I enjoy being around people who disagree with me; and I enjoy being in non-political contexts and activities.

I want someone who can respectfully challenge me. I know what I believe, so there's no point in my taking on a relationship with someone who thinks like me or laughs at what I laugh at. I enjoy being with someone who can offer me the opposite.

You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with, and work out ideas which you might not have come up with, or who improve on ideas you had.

I spend a lot of time bathing in a glow of consensus, but you have to be willing to say something to people who might not agree with you and take the consequences of what follows.

I like ideas, but I don't like being preached to.

I'm absolutely not looking for someone who agrees with me about everything or someone who wants to please me by believing what I believe.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

Well, to tell you truth, I have learned a long time ago that the trick when doing a debate, any kind of debate, is to just turn off the judgment switch in my head.

My mother always taught us that if people don't agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you've listened to them carefully and you still think that you're right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

You don't want a whole bunch of yes people around you.

One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron.

I don't think all comedy should be mindless. Have something that's thoughtful. Maybe some things are tongue-in-cheek; maybe some things are very direct. I like that people have to think about things. That excites me. Because if you say certain things, it starts a dialogue. Even if you disagree, it's still a dialogue.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Everybody is entitled to have an opinion. But it is also useful to have some facts.

We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right.

If a book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose.

I don’t attack people. I attack ideas. And some very good people can have some very bad ideas.

What we say is an opinion it's the best that we can reach, if anybody can bring a better opinion we will accept it.

This is an increasingly diversifying society, and people are coming into much closer contact with each other than they ever did. I find that a problem for a university, because bumping up against people who disagree with you is fundamental to the creation of new knowledge. And so universities can't go silent. You can't have a place where it's not permitted to make a certain kind of argument. But you can have a place which forbids epithets to be thrown at people.

I don’t expect anyone to just sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

Somewhere in this we got into impugning people's character and motives if we didn't like their ideas. We gotta get back to just debating ideas.