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Without free expression humankind may be robbed of ideas that would otherwise have contributed to its development. Preserving freedom of speech maximizes the chance of truth emerging from its collision with error and half-truth. It also reinvigorates the beliefs of those who would otherwise be at risk of holding views as dead dogma.
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Nigel Warburton |
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In 1755 one of the worst natural disasters of the eighteenth century occurred: the Lisbon earthquake that killed more than 20,000 people. This Portuguese city was devastated not just by the earthquake, but also by the tsunami that followed, and then by fires that raged for days.
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Nigel Warburton |
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Those who do the right thing don't do it simply because of how they feel: the decision has to be based on reason, reason that tells you what your duty is, regardless of how you happen to feel.
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Nigel Warburton |
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the mind shaping reality just is reality. There is nothing beyond it. But this did not mean that reality remained in a fixed state. For Hegel, everything is in a process of change, and that change takes the form of a gradual increase in self-awareness, our state of self-awareness being fixed by the period in which we live.
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Nigel Warburton |
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If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
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Nigel Warburton |
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There once was a man who said 'God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad.
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Nigel Warburton |
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For Mill, the acknowledgment of his or her own fallibility is part of what makes someone a serious thinker. Human knowledge progresses when people recognize that they may be wrong even on issues that seem certain to them. Wisdom involves openness to those who disagree with us. It is only when our ideas have been subjected to criticism and all objections considered--if necessary seeking these objections out--that we have any right to think o..
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Nigel Warburton |
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Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd: I am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.
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Nigel Warburton |
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As a young man he had been a brave soldier fighting in the Peloponnesian wars against the Spartans and their allies. In middle age he shuffled around the marketplace, stopping people from time to time and asking them awkward questions. That was more or less all he did.
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Nigel Warburton |
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Philosophy is an activity: it is a way of thinking about certain sorts of question.
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Nigel Warburton |