I think it’s valuable to stop and think for a moment about your motivations whenever you get up to respond: are you getting somewhere with what you have to say or are you just making noise?

Great read, succinct. Also I like the quote from Thomas More, Utopia:

There’s a rule in the Council that no resolution can be debated on the day that it’s first proposed. All discussion is postponed until the next well-attended meeting. Otherwise someone’s liable to say the first thing that comes into his head, and then start thinking up arguments to justify what he has said, instead of trying to decide what’s best for the community. That type of person is quite prepared to sacrifice the public to his own prestige, just because absurd as it may sound, he’s ashamed to admit that his first idea might have been wrong—when his first idea should have been to think before he spoke.