We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris.
Bret StephensRead
Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person's point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of embracing differing viewpoints as opportunities for personal growth and understanding.
Arlo Guthrie highlights the necessity of not merely tolerating different perspectives but actively engaging with them to enhance our own understanding. By welcoming challenges to our beliefs, we can expand our horizons and contribute to the well-being of others, indicating that open dialogue and acceptance are crucial for both personal and communal growth.
In practice
In a debate about social issues, you might use this quote to encourage open-mindedness.
We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris.
There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world.
The idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government) has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.
If I was President of the United States, I'd rather be right than interesting. If I was CEO of a company, I'd rather be right than interesting. But I'm a journalist - what journalist would rather be right than interesting?
And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.
Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere.
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