“Let us resolve to have a politics shot through with doubt, so that, if it
ever comes time to do murder for our politics, our very opinions about
politics will make us hesitate, long and hard, before pulling the trigger.
Let us be meta-rational about our politics, and recognize that this is an
area where we humans have constantly gotten things wrong, and where
we have constantly killed and died in vain. Let us adopt a world-view that
accords well with our well-known human failings. Let us tell ourselves—
hopefully with all the allure of an ironclad certitude—that we are prone to
being wrong, and that it is ghastly to kill for a mistake.

With others in the same position, we can share a bond of camaraderie,
regardless of our particular conclusions. We can know the future may
make fools of us all, and that in all probability it will. But we don’t know
just how the future will do it, and anyway, we are still permitted to believe,
as long as we do it modestly. If our beliefs are to be overthrown by something
better, that happy event will arrive only because you and I have
earnestly fought the good fight in the present. And it’s a fight in which, at
any rate, we can now join sincerely and without fear.”