“I don’t think …” “Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter.
Alice tries to reason, and the Hatter cuts her off with a fake rule. The irony is sharp: talking without thinking is common, yet he wields it to silence her. Frustration fits because sense keeps getting punished. Thematically, the line skewers shallow debate where volume outruns thought. It pushes Alice—and us—toward clearer, braver speech. We learn to spot the trick: shutting down thought by pretending to defend it. The cure is stubborn, honest reasoning.