Aldous Harding Quotes

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 attack people. I attack ideas. And some very good people can have some very bad ideas.

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don't want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

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.

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.

Well, first of all, no professor should be able to say, I refuse to defend my position. I refuse to debate my position.

Critics reach that age when it is as valuable and daring to hold a negative opinion as it is for a positive. We learn and understand from both.

A good, hard-hitting dissent keeps you honest.

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

Civilized discourse demands critical thinking, self-reflexiveness, sober-headed analysis.

A ContraPoints video is never going to be framed as 'I'm so offended by this idea.' It's not, 'I'm so intimidated by my opponent's big, masculine brain.' It's more, 'I'm bored of you, and also, you're a dum-dum.'

I think there are different ways of being rigorous, and I am asking people to be as rigorous in their pleasure as in their criticism.

When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

This country is about, in my judgment, aggressive, open debate. There is an old saying: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking very much.

If something is wrong, it'll prove to be wrong in the wash, and if it's right, you don't want to not expose yourself to it - so I read everything, no matter how horrible it gets. You listen and take it in and if it doesn't sway you, you'll know you considered it.

The power of real debate is in the language and intellectual honesty of the debaters, alongside the engagement of spectators.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle - ancient or modern - must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them.

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.

I like critics with strong opinions.

One may criticize even what one reveres.

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.

It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues.