You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.
Peggy NoonanRead
You don't tell people who disagree with you they'd be better off somewhere else. And you don't reduce them to stereotypes; you address them as fully formed people worthy of respect. You try to persuade them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Respecting differing opinions involves dialogue and understanding, rather than dismissal.
In this quote, Peggy Noonan emphasizes the importance of treating people who hold different opinions with respect. Instead of alienating those who disagree or simplifying their beliefs into stereotypes, the quote advocates for engaging in thoughtful conversation with the aim of persuasion and understanding, acknowledging them as complex individuals deserving of dignity.
Themes
RespectDialogueUnderstandingDisagreementPersuasion
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about politics, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of respectful discourse.
More from Peggy Noonan
All quotes →If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else.
Peggy NoonanRead
Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.
Peggy NoonanRead
Naps are nature's way of reminding you that life is nice, like a beautiful swinging hammock strung between birth and infinity.
Peggy NoonanRead
We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom. ...Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls.
Peggy NoonanRead
When everyone in America knows you're in a dreadful position, admit you're in a dreadful position. Don't lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink.
Peggy NoonanRead
Similar quotes
My mother and father taught me about black excellence and dynasty. They experienced racism personally, and when something like that happens to you and not around you, you develop a different perception than someone who has never experienced racism a day in their lives.
LizzoRead
Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let's compare scintillation - let's share starlight.
Naomi Shihab NyeRead
Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.
Emile M. CioranRead
The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.
Bell HooksRead
Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.
Jodi PicoultRead
...though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert.
Edith WhartonRead