The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.

You change society by changing the wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political discussions are being made, and you will change the outcomes... You will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind.

The real battlefield is the realm of ideas.

Take the Pyramids. Great blocks of useless masonry, put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent.Mrs. Allerton said cheerfully: You'd rather have no Pyramids, no Parthenon, no beautiful tombs or temples— just the solid satisfaction of knowing that people got three meals a day and died in their beds.The young man directed his scowl in her direction. I think human beings matter more than stones.

The thing that strikes me more and more, is the extraordinary viciousness and dishonesty of political controversy in our time. I don't mean merely that controversies are acrimonious. They ought to be that when they are on serious subjects. I mean that almost nobody seems to feel that an opponent deserves a fair hearing or that the objective truth matters as long as you can score a neat debating point.

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.

Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.

The 'pre-emption' versus 'prevention' debate may be a distinction without much difference. The important thing is to have it understood that the United States is absolutely serious. The jihadists have in the past bragged that America is too feeble and corrupt to fight. A lot is involved in disproving that delusion on their part.

Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky [Letters, December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the roots of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11:Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts...') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political.

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined?...Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the other side?...And when you think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?...Is not the great defect of our education today---a defect traceable through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned---that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils subjects, we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning.

A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.

Maisie bit her lip. She had learned that sometimes it was best to let words die of their own accord, rather than fight them.

In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, or an unjust interest.

If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.

Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.

When it comes to moral dilemmas and matters of discerning right justice, my natural sympathy so often happens to land on the opposite end of that of most of my peers. I sometimes wonder if this is nothing more than the misguidedness and the wickedness of my own heart. I wonder other times if God wires some of us in such a way so that fair discourse might then be provided, so that honest and unbiased, due process is ultimately more likely to be carried out. Perhaps it is all necessary for variance of perception, for mindful debate: that the heart is meant to create a bit of bias on certain issues; as between one another, they weigh and balance. For not all hearts are the same.

Whenever we want to combat our enemies, first and foremost we must start by understanding them rather than exaggerating their motives.

Some of the most polished ideas are discovered through healthy, honest debate, so if you don't argue with yourself every once in a while, other people will gladly point out if, in any sense, you missed a spot.