Parenting & Family Quote by Alistair Cooke

Compliments, Cooke suggests, aren’t really about praise at all; they’re about permission. The line sidesteps the usual adult reflex to reward compliance ("good job" meaning "good job doing it my way") and swaps it for a subtler gift: the sense that your mind is your own. That’s a slyly radical definition of kindness from a journalist whose entire profession depends on curiosity surviving contact with authority.

The phrasing matters. "The feeling you give him" makes the compliment an atmosphere, not a verdict. It’s not a gold star pinned to a shirt; it’s a room with the windows open. And "set free" is loaded: it implies the default state is captivity - to parental expectations, to social scripts, to the quiet pressure of wanting to stay lovable. Cooke is naming a power dynamic most people prefer to keep invisible. Adults and mentors don’t just teach; they subtly police the boundaries of what can be thought without consequences.

He sharpens the point with "right for him", a phrase that risks sounding relativistic until you notice the discipline embedded in it: inquiry first, conclusion second. He’s not celebrating contrarianism for sport. He’s advocating intellectual self-authorship, where agreement is earned rather than demanded. The closing clause - "whether or not they coincide with your own" - is the moral stress test. It’s easy to endorse independence in theory; Cooke is talking about the real-world moment when the kid disagrees with you and you still keep the door open. That’s the compliment that doesn’t expire.