Top Highlights

• if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
• it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
• unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.
• The sin of ‘assuming infallibility’ (first ground) is, thus, the sin of believing, or pretending, that you are in possession of the truth when you are not.
• The argument’s central contention (the second ground) is that the discovery of truth is facilitated by the ‘collision’ of opinions which takes place when ideas are discussed.