Respect for Ideas Quotes

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

The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas. Thus it permits the freest expression of views before students, trusting to their good sense in passing judgment on these views. Only in this way can it best serve American democracy.

Science requires much more than money and projects. Science requires freedom: freedom to enquire, to challenge, to think, and to envision the unimagined. We must be able to question convention and arbitrate our disputes by the rules of evidence. It is the content of scientific work that matters, not the persons who produced it, regardless of the color of their skin, the god they choose to worship, the ethnic group they were born into, or their gender. These are the values of science, but even more, they are societal values worth defending, not just to promote the pursuit of science but to have a better and more humane society.

Of all forms of diversity that should be celebrated on university campuses, none is more important than supporting, nurturing, and promoting intellectual diversity.

Principle says it's not who put forth an idea. It's not the position of the person who put forth an idea; it's not the longevity of the person or the party of the person. That's not what it is at all. In a power system, that's the way it works. But in a principle system, it's what it says.

I don't think anyone should be banned. If you don't like a book, set it aside.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of reality [...] demand our respect, for they are an intellectual's only birthright. They are often entirely wrong and always flawed in serious ways, but they must be understood honorably and not subjected to mayhem by the excision of patches.

If you start censoring what you're interested in for the audience, you don't give the audience enough credit.

If you want me to treat your ideas with more respect, get some better ideas.

People comment on how you look; it's so unnecessary. I just wanted people to listen to what I have to say instead of focusing on anything else.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

When I make a contribution in debates and in our public life, the House wants to hear what I say. It goes quiet - it wants to know what my opinion is.

Over the course of time this gave us a deep respect for ideas, both our own and those of others, and an understanding that conflict through debate is a powerful means of revealing truth.