Explore "On Controversy" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is astonishing what a great part of energy goes in our civilised and lettered society to controversy.
This country is certainly as civilised as any in Europe and it is much more lettered than any other. That is, there are more people bothering about print than you will find anywhere else. It has something to do, I think, with living in great towns and depending upon newspapers, but, anyhow, there it is, and one of its effects is a continued occupation in controversy. It always astonishes the foreign visitor, and I think it usually irritates the foreign resident. It is a habit often attacked, but all this opposition to it is a foreign opposition at bottom. To the native controversy is food and drink, and no one would be without it.