we all benefit enormously from living in a society which is rich with prejudices, because strong opinions, however biased or wrongheaded, energize debate. It is a positive good to have among us some racists and anti-Semites, some Christian-haters and some rabid fundamentalists. An enlightened, and efficient, intellectual regime lets a million prejudices bloom, including hateful ones. It avoids any attempt to stamp out prejudice, because stamping out prejudice inevitably means making everybody share the same prejudice, and thus killing science. Rather, it pits people’s prejudices against each
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