Quotes about argument

Intelligence seeks reasons behind things. Wisdom looks for things behind reasons.

There's more to logic than identifying logical fallacies.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of ma

Our enemies are quite good for relentlessly keeping us sharp and on our toes. This especially goes for sincere philosophers. They use their enemies to challenge their arguments so that they can know the weak points in their own reasoning and how to argue for and strengthen their position. There are just none like one's enemies to always look for his mistakes and do it harder than anyone else.

It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept logicians, but every now and then they have to re

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won’t? - Damon

They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.

Causing any damage or harm to one party in order to help another party is not justice, and likewise, attacking all feminine conduct [in order to warn men away from individual women who are deceitful] is contrary to the truth, just as I will show you with a hypothetical case. Let us suppose they did this intending to draw fools away from foolishness. It would be as if I attacked fire -- a very good and necessary element nevertheless -- because some people burnt themselves, or water because someon

The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge - much older than the desire for truth - to command attention, dominate one's fellows.

The clash of ideas is not weakness.Truth reaches its place when tussling with error.

It's a strange truth that no matter how persuaded we might be of our own correctness, the discomfiting realization that others disagree with us causes a paralyzing inability to argue the case convincingly.

There's a wonderful, perhaps apocryphal story that people tell about Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the brilliant, prickly, and iconoclastic late senator from New York. Apparently, Moynihan was in a heated argument with one of his colleagues over an issue, and the other senator, sensing he was on the losing side of the argument, blurted out: 'Well, you may disagree with me, Pat, I'm entitled to my own opinion." To which Moynihan frostily replied, "You are entitled to you own opinion, but you are not e

The absence of even rough agreement on the facts puts every opinion on equal footing and therefore eliminates the basis for thoughtful compromise. It rewards not those who are right, but those - like the White House press office - who can make their arguments most loudly, most frequently, most obstinately, and with the best backdrop.

Would you not say that peace is the greatest desire of true soldiers? Do we not have the most to lose from war? And businesses, most of them except military and oil ones, most of them have a vested interest in peace and prosperity. You cannot sell a house to a war refugee living in a tent, can you? Really hard tto sell an iPhone to a shattered victim. Businesses and corporatoons run this country. So yuou have to approach them with logic. Emotional appeals to the hippies of this world will not ch

Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.

No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.

The real purpose of the opposition is to minimize the amount of money the ruling party will have stolen from the people at the end of its term.

A deep breath is a technique with which we minimize the number of instances where we say what we do not mean … or what we really think.

Whenever they are condemning weaves or breast implants, some people speak so passionately that their false teeth almost fall out.

If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, both are useless.

It's futile to point the finger of condemnation and say, "Men... this" or "Women... that". Truth is, we are all guilty and innocent of many of life's trials.

When there is no argument [dispute] over a talk, it is called ‘Principle’.

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.

To know if someone can speak offensively or politely, don’t give him poem to recite; don’t give him a song to sing. Just engage him in an argument and you will know it for yourself who he is.

We may have different points of arguments from perspectives of belief, faith and religion.But we must not hate each other. We are one human family.

I am a great believer in not pushing each other’s “buttons” just because we know where they are! That’s part of trusting each other. We need to trust that our vulnerabilities and challenges are safe with the person we love.

I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light.

Proctor: I am only wondering how I may prove what she told me, Elizabeth. If the girl's a saint now, I think it is not easy to prove she's fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a room alone- I have no proof for it.Elizabeth: You were alone wit

Hesitation and the fear of being judged kills more relationships than misunderstanding and arguments.

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can’t reason without them.

Naturally, I always place my word over anyone else's simply because I know why I said what I said.

When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty—or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical

Rather than pound or a national mind that he believed had been closed by his critics, John Quincy Adams decided to seek a place in the is the esteem of future generations.

Some things that goes out of your mouth can wrap itself around your neck and choke you to death in future.

The immoral woman in Luke 7 has the faith to anticipate Christ's forgiveness. She can act in love with no words to justify.

Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you’re afraid of them.

Lincoln had entirely outgrown juvenile delight in religious argument. Talking with God seemed to the mature Lincoln more important than talking about Him.

You will find it hard to hear from God until you let go your rights and your agenda.

People will say,"there's heaven and hell", and they take it so serious that they look so sorrowful with penitence. I would rather ask them to show me the route that leads to heaven or hell.

The best thing to do when someone is trying to argue with you is to repeatedly state "Stay Away" and video record the entire event. You may need that video for the police afterwords when the aggressor starts fabricating fantasies about the event.

If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame.In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor

She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn’t mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute.

It was a bad idea to play chicken with someone who'd known you your whole life. Nobody came out a winner.

Don't fight to be right, but fight when you are right.

When it comes to moral dilemmas and matters of discerning right justice, my natural sympathy so often happens to land on the opposite end of that of most of my peers. I sometimes wonder if this is nothing more than the misguidedness and the wickedness of my own heart. I wonder other times if God wires some of us in such a way so that fair discourse might then be provided, so that honest and unbiased, due process is ultimately more likely to be carried out. Perhaps it is all necessary for varianc

Mandy, I hardly think this was appropriate, not after… you know… after the funeral we haven’t had the money for any of your weird little games and I was hoping you’d be more mature now that Jud’s gone,” her father had disappointedly added. “How much’d that cake cost you?”“It’s paid for,” Mandy had argued, but her voice had sounded tiny in the harbour wind. “I used the cash from my summer job at Frenchy’s last year and I… it was my birthday, dad!”“You can’t even be normal about this one thing, ca

There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.

During the flames of controversy, opinions, mass disputes, conflict, and world news, sometimes the most precious, refreshing, peaceful words to hear amidst all the chaos are simply and humbly 'I don't know.

There are 2 kinds of fighters: those who fight because they hate, and those who fight because they love.

Silence is the invisibility of talking. I'd take half an argument over half a silence any day. And I'd take peace and quiet over a full-blown argument any other day, unless it's Tuesday.

You can never win resentment with an argument—only love can do that.

Bang! The end of his little finger, now, and three more pieces of the rest. His middle finger was down to the knuckle, almost. Severard stared, his eyes with with horror, his breath coming short, fast gasps. Shock, amazement, stunned terror. Glokta leaned down to his ear. 'I hope you weren't planning to take up the violin, Severard. You'll be lucky if you can play a fucking gong by the time we're done here.

Forgive me, madam," he said lightly, amused, "but waiting to make love to you again is straining my nerves." She scoffed but she was quite shaken; he could see it in her expression, in the way she nervously toyed with the buttons on her pelisse."How awfully presumptuous of you to think I'd let you.""You will," he insisted soothingly.She gaped at him."Please continue," he urged. "I'm aching to hear the rest.""You're as arrogant as usual.""You missed it, though.""I absolutely did not," she asserte

The only way to efficiently battle evil is to copy enough to know how to counter each argument, yet not enough to believe all the bullshit.

The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker.

They argued because they liked argument, liked the swift run of the unfettered mind along the paths of possibility, liked to question what was not questioned.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

You don’t know anything about me.”“No, I know not everything about you. But I sense enough to know you have mistaken obsession with drive, guilt with injustice. I know you want to escape what you are, cabbage fairy,” he said, reaching for his hood and gloves and tucking them into the waistband of his trousers. “Your desires are no different from my own, I simply have the courage to face them.

Whenever we want to combat our enemies, first and foremost we must start by understanding them rather than exaggerating their motives.

Don’t say to yourself, ‘Everyone argues!’ to justify and normalise your fighting, when the most natural thing is to love.

Nothing firms up a friendship like a good-natured argument.

Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one's arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.

I'm a writer by profession and it's totally clear to me that since I started blogging, the amount I write has increased exponentially, my daily interactions with the views of others have never been so frequent, the diversity of voices I engage with is far higher than in the pre-Internet age—and all this has helped me become more modest as a thinker, more open to error, less fixated on what I do know, and more respectful of what I don't. If this is a deterioration in my brain, then more, please."

A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.

Raise your vibration, Not your tone of voice..You gain inspiration, For Peace is a choice.

By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?

Thus, by science I mean, first of all, a worldview giving primacy to reason and observation and a methodology aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of the natural and social world. This methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: namely, the commitment to the incessant testing of assertions through observations and/or experiments — the more stringent the tests, the better — and to revising or discarding those theories that fail the test. One corollary of the critical sp

The only sort of pride that may serve a man well on that rarest occasion is his hatred of being wrong. It keeps his mouth shut, his ears open, and his research extensive. And yet this is also the deadliest because when he is in fact proven wrong, he absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. It then keeps his mouth open, his ears shut, and his research inexistent.

We usually learn from debates that we seldom learn from debates.

Just consider how terrible the day of your death will beOthers will go on speaking and you will not be able to argue back

We seldom learn much from someone with whom we agree.

If you can't impress them with your argument, impress them with your actions.

Do you know, the only people I can have a conversation with are the Jews? At least when they quote scripture at you they are not merely repeating something some priest has babbled in their ear. They have the great merit of disagreeing with nearly everything I say. In fact, they disagree with almost everything they say themselves. And most importantly, they don't think that shouting strengthens their argument.

You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.

You can not control the thought, but you can control the tongue.

Argumentation is a human enterprise that is embedded in a larger social and psychological context. This context includes (1) the total psyches of the two persons engaged in dialogue, (2) the relationship between the two persons, (3) the immediate situation in which they find themselves and (4) the larger social, cultural and historical situation surrounding them.

Take caution when declaring war because you may believe it will be easy, but war will always end in despair.

I wasn’t in the mood for a fight, but fights weren’t always conveniently scheduled. (Jessica)

To write is to reveal oneself.When I write something, fiction or non-fiction, I do not expect you to accept what I write, nor to agree with what I propose.I expect you to spend at least a tenth of a second to think about it - may be not about the characters, nor about the piece, but at least about the idea.

Fighting is found everywhere in the animal kingdom and nowhere so much as among human animals. Animals fight to get what they want--food, sex, territory, control, etc.--because there are other animals who want the same thing or who want to stop them from getting it. The same is true of human animals, except that we have developed more sophisticated techniques for getting our way. Being "rational animals," we have institutionalized our fighting in a number of ways, one of them being war. Even tho

You and I both know that love is for children,'' he said. ''We're adults. Compatibility is for adults.''''Compatibility is for my Bluetooth and my car,'' Teresa replied. ''Only they get along just fine, and my car never makes my bluetooth feel like shit.

It's a silly argument, and unnecessary. Creativity doesn't happen "in here" or "out there" but in the spaces in between. Creativity is a relationship, one that unfolds at the intersection of person and place.

Arguing is a waste of time, because our attitudes need a quantum leap, not our knowledge. Arguing is a sport at best and a bad attitude at worst.

Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence.

Some people would have killed themselves and/or someone else if they were single and some people would not have done that.

I later spent... five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis, and always attempting a legal argument for release.

Even in the beginning, when we knew there was a legal argument about how much our song sounds like his song, as one songwriter to another, I wasn't sure that Cat Stevens would take that as bad.

My dad shaped the footballing side of me, and Mum shaped me as a person. I've always been very close to her - we've only ever had one argument, and that was over something stupid when I was 13.

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal.

Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

Ridicule is the first and last argument of a fool.

When I'm alone, I can sleep crossways in bed without an argument.

Your opponent's wrong doesn't automatically make you right. Most fights aren't about who's right they are contention over degrees of wrongness.

God's existence needs to be established independently before he can be brought into account for causation it cannot be assumed at the start.

Don’t rush to justify yourself with a verbal argument your choice of words may unmake what you made.