Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
Interpretation
Value active, intelligent discussions over passive agreement.
This quote by Bertrand Russell emphasizes the importance of engaging in thoughtful disagreement rather than simply conforming to consensus. By choosing to participate in intelligent dissent, individuals can reach a more profound understanding of ideas, leading to growth and a more robust consensus that values intelligence over mere compliance.
In practice
During a panel discussion on ethics, I referenced this quote to encourage more critical thinking.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother_x000D_ _x000D_ to learn more than the simplest facts of flight how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this_x000D_ _x000D_ gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else,_x000D_ _x000D_ Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
So long as you have faith in your Guru, nothing will be able to obstruct your way.
No one knows you better than you know yourself. Do the thing you want. Don't wait for someone else
If the enemy cannot make you BAD, heβll make you BUSY.
Consider what each soil will bear, and what each refuses.
Speak only that which will bring you honor.
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