I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking.
Interpretation
Engaging in honest debate to seek truth and right ideas is a worthy effort.
In this quote, Charles Krauthammer emphasizes the importance of rational discourse in the search for truth and ethical principles. He suggests that through honest debate and thorough argumentation, individuals can engage in a noble pursuit that contributes to the greater understanding of right ideas and moral clarity, highlighting the value of integrity in intellectual discussions.
In practice
During a political discussion, I might say, 'As Charles Krauthammer once stated, the pursuit of truth through honest debate is a noble undertaking.'
If you get a call to go to a certain place in the middle of the night to pick up stolen goods, and it turns out the stolen goods don't show up but the cops show up, I think you're going to have a very weak story saying, 'Well, I got swindled here.'
The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.
You're betraying your whole life if you don't say what you think - and you don't say it honestly and bluntly.
History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with the linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it 'racist.
When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.
Sometimes it's easy to go where the wind blows, but those that stand firmly planted are forces to be reckoned with.
Night thoughts have a different color than day thoughts, a different slant, more than anything else they know all the secret paths and chinks in the armor they can take advantage of to force their way into consciousness.
The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.
We do become our conversations. We really will become our associations.
The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
The diagnosis that poverty, lack of education, or lack of opportunities have much to do with terrorism requires a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature. This diagnosis leads to the prognosis that all we need to do to solve the terrorism problem is to create societies that are less poor, better educated and have more opportunities.
Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
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