John Stuart Mill Quotes

Read things to not just know what's going on, but see it from different varying viewpoints.

I think the biggest mistake I made was this wretched ability to see both sides of an argument.

In any business, the more you learn, the more sympathetic you can be to other people's positions.

Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right.

When you talk, you only talk about something that you already know. But when you listen, you can learn something you don’t know.

If you find a disputant while he is hot, do not despise him because you are not of the same opinion. Be not angry against him when he is wrong; away with such a thing.

There is more than two sides. Facts are often apart from what both sides say about each other.

Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.

I have learned that if I only see and deeply appreciate one side of an argument, it means I am probably missing something important.

I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.

I simply cannot accept that there are on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument.

Were one merely to seek information, one should inquire of the man who hates, but if one wishes to know what truly is, one better ask the one who loves.

My trademark at CNN was really asking insightful questions and making sure people are understanding the connections in humanity, and I think that is the core of education.

As soon as you think you know someone else's truth better than they do, you are in deep water.

Human nature is so constituted, that all see and judge better in the affairs of other men than in their own.

Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

If you read literature, you put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You learn from great figures in literature.

It's only through listening that you learn, and I never want to stop learning.

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

I don't think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something.

If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person's side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.

People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

Since I've written many of my books from a less-than-sympathetic viewpoint, I think that being able to see things from all sides is a useful talent.