I’m a philosophy major—again, courtesy of my mother. I credit being an open-minded person to having the experience of being in a Nietzsche 101 class when you’re 18 years old and you think you have all the right opinions. You put your hand up and you’re immediately torn apart by a bunch of philosophy students that are, frankly, much better informed than you are.

What that taught me was the value of intellectual humility, and it’s something that we would do well to have more of, and certainly of politicians, which is the courage to be wrong, the courage to even look for the reasons why we are wrong. And that is something that I feel unashamed to commit to. I’m not scared to be wrong. I’m not scared to look for the reasons I’m wrong. But if I’m right, I will be right.

I have a number of memories of times where I have been very certain that I was right about something, but in taking the time to listen I realized that I was either wrong or simply coming at it from the wrong direction. I rarely ever regretted asking somebody to expand further on their story.

Report continues in volume B.