Skip to content

Here's a heresy: "How do you know that?" is a powerful question for helping people think, but it's not the best question. The best question is, "How could that belief be wrong?"

— Peter Boghossian How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)

Another quote →

More quotes by Peter Boghossian

Peter Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I'd be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive — and very much needed.

How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)

Know when to walk away, even when the conversation is going well.

How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)

The most difficult thing to accept for people who work hard at forming their beliefs on the basis of evidence is that not everyone forms their beliefs in that way.

How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)

To argue that people need faith is to abandon hope, and to condescend and accuse the faithful of being incapable of understanding the importance of reason and rationality.

A Manual for Creating Atheists (2013)

When your conversation partner is getting angry, the single best thing you can do in most circumstances is to stop whatever else you're doing and listen.

How to Have Impossible Conversations (2019)

All Peter Boghossian quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Peter Boghossian (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.