Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Lacking something to offer does not validate another person's claims. Truth depends on the claim itself, not the speaker's status.
In plain terms
Not having an opinion does not make another person right.
What can you take from it?
Evaluate claims on their own merits, not the speaker.

Where it applies

  • debates
  • decision making
  • philosophy

Putting it to work

  • evaluating arguments
  • critical thinking

Questions to consider

  • Does status affect your judgment?
  • How do you test a claim?

Another view

Context sometimes matters in persuasion.

More from Richard Dawkins

  1. It is a very helpful insight to say we are vehicles for our DNA, we are hosts for DNA parasites which are our genes. Those are insights which help us to unders…

    Permalink to quote #121
  2. Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature.

    Permalink to quote #123
  3. McDonald: Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are - well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family li…

    Permalink to quote #120

Related quotes

  1. I may not be smart enough to debate you point-for-point on this, but I have the feeling about 60% of what you say is crap.

    David LettermanDavid Letterman quote #4
  2. There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority ... The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of…

    Karl PopperKarl Popper quote #45
  3. The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clea…

    Ralph CudworthRalph Cudworth quote #1