“He knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally able to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of his adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive from.”
John Stuart Mill On Liberty
“When evening comes, I return home and go to my study. On the threshold, I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workaday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Contact Us
The Whole Story Institute
6 Tamarack Street
Hudson, NH 03051
www.wholestoryinstitute.org