Peter Boghossian Quotes

Know when to walk away, even when the conversation is going well. Putting pressure on your partner to continue a discussion beyond their comfort level shuts down listening, encourages defensiveness, and turns the conversation into a frustrated rehearsal of why one of you is correct and the other dense.

Seemingly impossible conversations typically have one thing in common: they're about moral beliefs rooted in one's sense of identity, but they play out on the level of facts (or assertions, name-calling, grandstanding, threats, etc.). [...] The most difficult conversations, then, masquerade as discussions about something other than morality, but they are actually about what qualities, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors individuals believe make them good people or bad people and why it is important to hold the right views among those.

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.