Better to Be Wrong

In December 1948, Camus stood before a packed hall in Paris and described the kind of people his murderous century actually needed. Not heroes with final answers. Witnesses. In the speech, published as The Witness of Freedom, he adds a second condition that completes the thought. Let others speak.

The sentence ranks two goods that our minds keep ranking backward. Being right is a good. Camus never pretended otherwise, and he argued fiercely all his life.

But remaining harmless to human life is a greater good, and the century he lived through was built by people who got the order wrong, people so sure of their rightness that the graves became details.

We rarely choose between error and graves. But we constantly choose between being right and being humane, and the small versions train us for the large ones. The argument pressed until someone breaks. The correction delivered in public for the pleasure of it. The relationship spent to win a point that will not matter in a month.

Today, when you feel the pleasure of being right rising in you, pause and check the price tag. If the cost is a person, be wrong a little longer. You can afford it better than you think.