Margaret Heffernan Quotes

Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you.

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.

Recognize that dissenting opinions are useful even when they're wrong, and go out of your way to reward them.

A fantastic model of collaboration: thinking partners who aren't echo chambers.

If you're also in the arena and you're putting your ideas out and you're owning them and you're saying "I disagree with you about this and that, I think you've got this wrong" - then not only do I invite that, I freaking love that. I love that. I'm an academic. I'm hardwired for a good debate.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

You can't have 'yes' people around you.

You can't have a university without having free speech, even though at times it makes us terribly uncomfortable. If students are not going to hear controversial ideas on college campuses, they're not going to hear them in America. I believe it's part of their education.

Some of the speakers we bring on campus may not reflect official church teaching, but that's how it is.

I like it when someone tells me 'I don't agree.' This is a true collaborator. When they say 'Oh, how great, how great, how great,' that's not useful.

More than anything else, we need in this society the opportunity for people to tell us what they think without being told that they're either dumb, or stupid, or uninformed.

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.

Disagreements are one of the fundamental positive aspects of science.

Let's not dismiss or attack individual ideas as being inadequate before we have had a chance to assess their positive effect as part of a whole solution.

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

Honest difference of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy among free men.

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.

Moving forward in science is as much unwinding the distorted thinking of the past as it is putting a clearer idea on the table.

A good, hard-hitting dissent keeps you honest.

If you agree with everything I have said, then I have failed.

It's important to have people who are absolutely willing to say you're wrong or who have a totally different perspective than you do on everything. Fresh ideas are hard to come by, and good ones are even harder.

You want someone who will challenge you back; sometimes, that's the way the best decisions get made.

I think most people like a bit of freedom and hearing things that they might not agree with, rather than just having everybody shutting their mouths.