The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.
Interpretation
The pursuit of comfort can lead to a loss of moral integrity and courage in intellectual discourse.
In this quote, John Stuart Mill warns that seeking comfort and ease in intellectual conversations often results in a neglect of moral courage. Individuals may choose to suppress their critical thoughts and beliefs to avoid conflict or discomfort, ultimately sacrificing their integrity and the strength of their convictions. Mill emphasizes the importance of moral courage in intellectual discussions, suggesting that true understanding and progress require a willingness to confront difficult truths and challenge prevailing norms.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of standing up for one's beliefs, one might refer to Mill's quote to emphasize the need for moral courage.
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.
To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
There should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences. It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved.
Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm.
This is what language does: organize the world into manageable, and in some sense artificial, units that can then be inhabited and manipulated.
On occasion, terrorists will succeed despite our best efforts. That is part of the legacy of 9/11. But 9/11 also shows us that while terrorists can destroy, they are unable to create.
We've got a thing called the 'tall poppy syndrome' in New Zealand, where if anyone is doing really well, it's quite common to try and bring them down - like, cut them down and say, 'You've been to the moon? So what? I mean, plenty of people have been to the moon.'
Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.
My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.