In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.
Interpretation
Debates often reveal that both perspectives have valid points and flaws in their arguments.
This quote by John Stuart Mill suggests that in intellectual discussions, each side usually has some truth in their arguments while also overlooking or denying aspects that might be equally valid from the opposing view. It highlights the importance of recognizing the complexity of ideas and arguments, where oversimplification can lead to misunderstandings and an incomplete grasp of the issue at hand.
In practice
In a university lecture on critical thinking, this quote can emphasize the need to consider multiple viewpoints.
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.
To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
There should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences. It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved.
Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.
Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
Good and evil both increase at compound interest.
If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.
Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.
What if when they called a war, no one went?
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