diversity of opinions Quotes

The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree - and thus keeps the road open to man's most valuable attribute: the creative mind.

I think people are looking for an alternative because in addition to there being sort of a myopic, lemming - like ants on a sugar cube mentality on this DNS attack story by many in the media, there's just this culture of sameness. Everybody sounds the same.

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

Nothing is black or white.

The reason that democracies always defeat dictatorships is because they're open to debate. We should never allow Washington to say, 'Shut up, get in line and wave the flag.'

Our philosophy is we call it as we see it. Sometimes you agree, sometimes you don't. Robust debate is good.

The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.

My sense from talking to college students is that you have a healthier sense of the diversity of opinions or arguments or analysis about issues. In our day it was just sort of, "Well gee, this is what the news says so that's the way it is." It didn't really get challenged that much.

Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.

They’re like,‘If you have an opinion against us, we’re gonna shut you down.' That’s not American. If you’re gay you should have the right to be gay in peace, and if you’re against it you should have the right to be against it in peace.

. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men's discourses... 'Tis not the owning one's dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.

By going on the defensive. [...] libertarians are, inadvertently, conceding that speech should be policed for propriety, and that those who violate standards set by the PC set are somehow defective on those grounds alone and deserve to be purged from "polite" company.

Think not that your word and yours alone must be right.

I do not look at the world in terms of black and white - and I find people who do rather scary. I think it's all shades of grey.

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

There are as many forms of advice as there are colors of the rainbow. Remember that good advice can come from bad people and bad advice from good people. The important thing about advice is that it is simply that. Advice.

As one of my teachers, Buckminster Fuller, says, we were given a right foot and a left foot, not a right foot and a wrong foot. The point is that, there's always two points of view out there, and we need to increase our ability to allow another point of view. Then we have a better chance for peace.

Just as war is freedom's cost, disagreement is freedom's privilege.

You can never find a candidate that will agree with everything you believe. Then you would just have a clone and that doesn't exist.

If the whole country had to have the same conversation that was safe for everybody, it would be a pretty awful place to live. There wouldn't be a conversation.

We do not seek the unanimity that comes to those who water down all issues to the lowest common denominator - or to those who conceal their differences behind fixed smiles - or to those who measure unity by standards of popularity and affection, instead of trust and respect. We are allies. This is a partnership, not an empire. We are bound to have differences and disappointments - and we are equally bound to bring them out into the open, to settle them where they can be settled, and to respect each other's views when they cannot be settled.

I think actually in any party it's a sign of general health to have different views, and especially on the subject of trade.

I think there's a temptation to try to think of people who don't vaccinate as a homogenous community, but I'm not convinced that's true. I'm not even sure that the word 'community' is totally accurate there, you know.

I would never feel confident enough to express my views and opinions as the right ones because I just don't think that's possible. There are so many sides to everything that nobody is right or wrong.