Leadership Quote by William Randolph

A politician praising the right to be wrong sounds like a paradox until you remember what politics looked like in the late 17th century: a world where being wrong could be treated as sedition, heresy, or simple insolence toward power. Randolph’s line works because it sneaks a radical defense of dissent into the language of rights. He doesn’t argue for the “right to be right” (which any ruler will happily endorse when it matches their interests). He argues for the right to miss the mark, to speak imperfectly, to back the losing argument without being crushed for it.

The subtext is procedural, not sentimental: a society that can’t tolerate error can’t run experiments, can’t revise laws, can’t let minority opinions breathe long enough to become tomorrow’s consensus. “Wrong” here is doing a lot of political work. It includes unpopular religious views, inconvenient criticism, and the messy trial-and-error of public debate. By elevating it to the “greatest” right, Randolph implies that all other liberties are decorative if this one is absent. Freedom of speech that only protects correct speech is just permission.

There’s also a shrewd warning aimed at those in charge. The quickest way to manufacture instability is to make people pretend certainty. When punishment attaches to being mistaken, you get hypocrisy, silence, and underground movements. Randolph’s statement isn’t an endorsement of ignorance; it’s a case for a political ecosystem sturdy enough to absorb human fallibility without turning it into a crime.