If there’s no listening, there’s no learning. Conversation is as much an opportunity to humbly and honestly examine one’s views as it is to defend them. Wisdom generally increases with discomfort—the kind of discomfort avoided by silencing, ignoring, or ridiculing others.

Squelching, eye-rolling, denigrating, and cold-shouldering are neither virtues nor signs of deep, studied conviction on a given topic. They’re indications of fear and acts of bullying. To keep talking, listening, reading, and learning—these are acts of courage.