"Most of us, I suppose, discover the badness of a cause chiefly be hearing the arguments in favour of it."

Most of us, I suppose, discover the badness of a cause chiefly by hearing the arguments in favour of it. That, at least, is the quickest and most convenient way. About the actual facts at issue we are most of us, as a rule, very inadequately informed, and sometimes placed beyond any possibility of personal verification. But if we wait a little and hear, not only the thing that is to be done, but why it is to be done, we find ourselves among phenomena which are always familiar and frequently notorious [...] We may suspend judgment, perhaps, when a big man knocks down a little man and offers no explanation. But we know what to think if he does offer an explanation which behind many polysyllables amounts to the mere statement that he is bigger. We are seldom convinced by the facts; for we seldom are closely acquainted with the facts. We are converted by the arguments- on the other side.

-April 28, 1906, Daily News