Daily Inspiration Quote by Morris Raphael Cohen

Cohen is describing a mental posture that refuses to let any ideology close the case. An "open eye for possible alternatives" sounds mild, even virtuous, but he frames it as a kind of solvent: once you admit that multiple explanations and arrangements might fit the facts, every faction built on certainty starts to wobble. The key phrase is "need to be scrutinized". Cohen isn’t praising eclectic vibes; he’s insisting on the discipline of comparison, the slow work of testing claims against reasons and evidence. That’s exactly what feels "profoundly disconcerting" to movements that depend on a settled answer.

His jab at conservatives is straightforward: conserving requires confidence that the inherited order is basically the right one, or at least safer than its rivals. But the sharper edge is aimed at "almost all revolutionaries". Cohen punctures the romantic idea that radicals are automatically open-minded. In practice, revolutions often demand the same psychological comfort as tradition: a single story of what’s wrong, a single route to what’s right, a single timetable. Alternatives are not just intellectual competitors; they are threats to cohesion.

The subtext is a defense of liberal pluralism and pragmatic inquiry in an era when grand systems were in vogue. Writing across the early 20th century - amid world wars, mass politics, and ideological absolutisms - Cohen is warning that the habit of critical scrutiny will alienate you from both the keepers of order and the prophets of a new one. He’s also quietly flattering the reader: if you can tolerate that disorientation, you’re doing the harder, rarer thing.