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Expansion and Widening Compilation (view source)
Revision as of 18:28, 12 November 2018
, 18:28, 12 November 2018→Intellectual Ways of Widening
''How is it that we lose a chance to widen our knowledge by prevailing in a debate?''
If you prevail in a debate, it means that your opinion has prevailed over the opinion of another, not necessarily because yours was truer than his, but because you were better at wielding the arguments or because you were a more stubborn debater. And you come out of the discussion convinced that you are right in what you assert; and so you lose a chance to see a view of the question other than your own and to add an aspect of the truth to the one or the ones you already possess. You remain imprisoned in your own thought and refuse to widen it.
(The Mother, 17 March 1961)
<ref>The Mother. (2003). Aphorism - 56. In On thoughts and aphorisms.
http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-56#p11</ref>[Based on Aphorism 56 — When, O eager disputant, thou hast prevailed in a debate, then art thou greatly to be pitied; for thou hast lost a chance of widening knowledge.]
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