by Jefferson Shupe
Published by FAIR: Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism
John Clark Ridpath wrote that James Otis was an “excitable and passionate” Massachusetts lawyer in the mid-1700s whose temper often undermined his arguments in court. It was said that his “manner towards his opponents was at times hard to bear” and that his “zeal and energy were at times unrestrained.” His friend, the story goes, would tug on his coat to calm him down. This tactic worked until Otis lashed out at his friend, “Do you take me for a schoolboy?”
Benjamin Franklin described in his autobiography a similar friend who gave him some free advice: while Franklin was often correct, he was “overbearing and rather insolent.” As a result, Franklin changed tactics and drafted a set of rules for himself to force some new habits. He abandoned phrases that amounted to “I’m right” and “you’re wrong.” He adopted softer language, saying (paraphrasing), “This is how it looks to me at the moment,” or “In some cases, I think you would be correct, but in this case, it looks different to me.”
He went on: “When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition…” Instead, he would begin by “observing that in certain cases or circumstances, his opinion would be right, but in the present case, there appeared or seemed to me some difference.”
Franklin soon began to notice that the “modest way in which [he] proposed [his] opinions” started to get substantial results. Not only was he less “mortified” when he turned out to be wrong, but he “more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with [him].”
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