Greg Lukianoff QUOTES

1 " The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

2 " Taleb opens the book with a poetic image that should speak to all parents. He notes that wind extinguishes a candle but energizes a fire. He advises us not to be like candles and not to turn our children into candles: "You want to be the fire and wish for the wind. "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

3 " Being offended is an emotional state, not a substantive argument; we cannot afford to give it the power to stifle debate. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

4 " So what happens when students get the message that saying the wrong thing can get you in trouble? They do what one would expect: they talk to people they already agree with, keep their mouths shut about important topics in mixed company, and often don’t bother even arguing with the angriest or loudest person in the room (which is a problem even for the loud people, as they may not recognize that the reason why others are deferring to their opinions is not because they are obviously right). "

― Greg Lukianoff , Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

5 " Though often used interchangeably, the concept of freedom of speech and the First Amendment are not the same thing. While the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press as they relate to duties of the state and state power, freedom of speech is a far broader idea that includes additional cultural values. These values incorporate healthy intellectual habits, such as giving the other side a fair hearing, reserving judgment, tolerating opinions that offend or anger us, believing that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, and recognizing that even people whose points of view we find repugnant might be (at least partially) right. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Freedom from Speech

6 " ...those in power often invoke civility to punish speech they dislike, but overlook the equally acid-tongued statements that are in agreement with their own assumptions. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

7 " As the sociologist Diana C. Mutz discovered in her book Hearing the Other Side (2006), those with the highest levels of education have the lowest exposure to people with conflicting points of view, while those who have not graduated from high school can claim the most diverse discussion mates.19 In other words, those most likely to live in the tightest echo chambers are those with the highest level of education. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

8 " Rather than teaching students to be skeptical of confirmation bias, we appear to be teaching them to have an expectation of confirmation: a sense of entitlement to an environment in which their beliefs are not contradicted (at least not too harshly). Expectation of confirmation is yet another manifestation of the desire for intellectual comfort, and it is also likely to increase over time. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Freedom from Speech

9 " No one individual is immune to the criticism of others and none can claim to be above intellectual reproach. No one is omniscient or infallible, so we are all forced to defend our arguments with logic, evidence, and persuasion. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate

10 " There is the moral dualism that sees good and evil as instincts within us between which we must choose. But there is also what I will call pathological dualism that sees humanity itself as radically . . . divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad. You are either one or the other. "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

11 " vital that people who have survived violence become habituated to ordinary cues and reminders woven into the fabric of daily life.31 Avoiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

12 " While it is easy to see how this way of thinking, when brought to a college campus, could lead to requests for safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggression training, and bias response teams, it is difficult to see how this way of thinking could produce well-educated, bold, and open-minded college graduates. "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

13 " these self-righteous censors often construct a “hero narrative” about themselves in which they are morally pure crusaders who must protect society from the objectionable opinions of the unenlightened masses. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Freedom from Speech

14 " But overprotection is just one part of a larger trend that we call problems of progress. This term refers to bad consequences produced by otherwise good social changes. It’s great that our economic system produces an abundance of food at low prices, but the flip side is an epidemic of obesity. It’s great that we can connect and communicate with people instantly and for free, but this hyperconnection may be damaging the mental health of young people. It’s great that we have refrigerators, antidepressants, air conditioning, hot and cold running water, and the ability to escape from most of the physical hardships that were woven into the daily lives of our ancestors back to the dawn of our species. Comfort and physical safety are boons to humanity, but they bring some costs, too. We adapt to our new and improved circumstances and then lower the bar for what we count as intolerable levels of discomfort and risk. By the standards of our great-grandparents, nearly all of us are coddled. Each generation tends to see the one after it as weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience. Those older generations may have a point, even though these generational changes reflect real and positive progress. To repeat, we are not saying that the problems facing students, and young people more generally, are minor or “all in their heads.” We are saying that what people choose to do in their heads will determine how those real problems affect them. Our argument is ultimately pragmatic, not moralistic: Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals if you do the opposite of what Misoponos advised. "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

15 " When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. MENG TZU (MENCIUS), fourth century BCE1 "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

16 " there is a window of higher impressionability running from about age fourteen to twenty-four, with its peak right around age eighteen. "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

17 " Worse still are those who come to see themselves as defenders of the feelings of others, even when such help is not requested or desired. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Freedom from Speech

18 " to be human is to have biases. "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

19 " Mobs can rob good people of their conscience, particularly when participants wear masks (in a real mob) or are hiding behind an alias or avatar (in an online mob). Anonymity fosters deindividuation—the loss of an individual sense of self—which lessens self-restraint and increases one’s willingness to go along with the mob.73 "

― Greg Lukianoff , The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

20 " This is precisely what you would expect when you train a generation to believe that they have a right not to be offended. Eventually, they stop demanding freedom of speech and start demanding freedom from speech. "

― Greg Lukianoff , Freedom from Speech