I wish it was me who said these wise words in the title. It was in fact Rabbi Sacks in an interview taken by Tim Ferris in his podcast. The quote resonated with me because whenever my views and believes were challenged I got scared. But what has always scared me more is the comfort zone.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks on Powerful Books, Mystics, Richard Dawkins, and the Dangers of Safe Spaces (#455)

“Rabbi Sacks: (…) Lots and lots of young children have peanut allergies. Have you come across it?

Tim Ferriss: True in the US as well.

Rabbi Sacks: There’s one country in the world where kids don’t have peanut allergies, and that is Israel. Because the most popular snack in Israel contains peanuts. So because they’re exposed to it from very early on, they develop immunity to it. And because at university, we are exposed to views that challenge our own, we develop immunity to it. And that is what makes us strong and healthy and safe. And people are going to go through our university system thinking that the world is a place where if you protest long and loudly enough on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, you can cancel out any view with which you disagree. Not only are you destroying the most important element of civilization, which is the collaborative pursuit of truth, but you are also potentially ruining those young people.

You have to make them intellectually robust and don’t carry on with what you’re doing, because frankly what you’re doing is an outrage. And I do believe that universities are so important to the health of a society that the guardians of those places should show a lot more courage.”

Find here the complete episode transcription.