
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Mill , John Stuart (2011-02-03), On Liberty, Simon & Brown, Retrieved on 2011-05-18
Folksonomies: politics liberty Memes
18 MAY 2011
Silencing Opinion is a 'peculiar evil'
In his celebrated little 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 only by
rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.
Mill ...A summary by Carl Sagan, not a direct quote.