Lord Acton Quotes

Always be willing to look at both sides of the argument. Understanding the other side is the best way to strengthen your own.

The hardest thing in the world, I now know, is to hold in your head that it is okay to think that you are right, but not to think so necessarily because everyone who disagrees with you is wrong or stupid or duped or bad.

A liberal is someone who is so open-minded that he won’t even take his own side in an argument.

As a Jew, I believe that every argument has a counterargument.

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

You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best loved ideas.

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue - it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues.

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.

You just need to put yourself in someone else's shoes and then see how they feel and then you will understand why they are reacting or why they are behaving the way that they are behaving. We need to be fair.

If you would judge, understand.

I like disagreement because it forces both sides to question their own opinions and why they feel that way.

I will listen to any argument put to me.

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.

The more history I learnt, the less interested I got in winning arguments and the more interested in establishing the truth.

Our opinions are less important than the spirit and temper with which they possess us, and even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way.

I wish at all events to retain at all times a judicial habit of not condemning a thing utterly until I have heard what is to be said for it.

I have labored carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions

Being unbiased is a lot like being humble: as soon as you think you are, you aren’t. Neither are a finite state of being but a continuous struggle to not allow our perspectives poison our opinions.

What I learned from clerking for Judge Guido Calabresi and for Justice Steven Breyer was that there is no position, regardless of how wrong you think it is, that does not have some arguments in its favor, and you have to find them. And then, no matter how right your own position is, you must look for the weaknesses in that they are always there. You must be willing to find them and possibly change your approach or your mind on the subject.

I often go into the lions' den and engage with those I know oppose my views, because I want to understand what other people think.

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

You don't have to agree with my vote, but you need to at least understand how I came to my vote.

"Kindness" can mean a lot of different things. In this case, I felt I had to present his [Donald Trump's] supporters in as fair a light as possible - many of them hadn't been interviewed before and that entailed some interviewer-courtesy in the editing and so on.