Best 867 quotes in «argument quotes» category

There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.

There is not the need of argument or any proof, but the mythical awareness, feeling, and faith to understand love and spiritual way. One cannot consider that only with the common sense and logic.

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 entitled to you own facts.

There was no arguing with a man when he started saying thing like that -- using logic as a weapon.

The shallow social and political alternatives bequeathed to contemporary western society by the Enlightenment and its aftermath, in which every issue stands either to left or to the right on some hypothetical spectrum, and every political question can be answered in terms of ‘for’ or ‘against’ – this trivialized world of thought cannot cope with the complexities of real life either in the first or the twenty-first century.

The traditional arguments for the existence of God have been fairly thoroughly criticised by philosophers. But the theologian can, if he wishes, accept this criticism. He can admit that no rational proof of God's existence is possible. And he can still retain all that is essential to his position, by holding that God's existence is known in some other, non-rational way. I think, however, that a more telling criticism can be made by way of the traditional problem of evil. Here it can be shown, not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively irrational, that the several parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another, so that the theologian can maintain his position as a whole only by a much more extreme rejection of reason than in the former case. He must now be prepared to believe, not merely what cannot be proved, but what can be disproved from other beliefs that he also holds.

The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it.

The volume of your voice does not increase the validity of your argument.

The weaker the argument the louder and more frequent the rhetoric.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato. Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

This sort of thing reduces my mind to a pulp. I can faintly resist when a man says that if the earth were a globe cats would not have four legs; but when he says that if the earth were a globe cats would not have five legs I am crushed.

The silence was pregnant with noise, with muted fury, with questions the father found too disgusting to frame and with answers to which the son was incapable of giving voice.

The worst part, the worst part, was that Lord de Worde was never wrong. It was not a position he understood in relation to his personal geography. People who took an opposing view were insane, or dangerous, or possibly even not really people. You couldn't have an argument with Lord de Worde. Not a proper argument. An argument, from arguer, meant to debate and discuss and persuade by reason. What you could have with William's father was a flaming row.

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.

They weren't making much sense; she decided they were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one ever really wins or loses, but which can go on for ever, if both parties are willing.

Those who use prejudice and hate as a foundation to make their cases have no merit. It is only when these feelings are set aside that we can think clearly and productively.

To leave a man's ego bigger, retweet him. To leave his faculty of reasoning better, challenge his tweet.

Those two little words -- says you -- are the most powerful argument in any discipline: theology, philosphy, even domestic harmony. They are powerful because they are true. Whenever you say something, it is you who says it. You. And what do you know?

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.

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.

Truth is always the strongest argument.

Users of slippery slope arguments should take skiing lessons—you really can choose to stop.

Washington DC is happiest when in indignation overdrive.

We get along like a house on fire these days.

Well, good-bye: I have enjoyed our conversation very much, I assure you.” “Conversation, indeed!” said the Rocket. “You have talked the whole time yourself. That is not conversation.” “Somebody must listen,” answered the Frog, “and I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.

Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue?

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.

We must listen to love before we reason for love is the reason. The reason of being, the purpose of life, it is love, simply love. Anything else stands at risk of getting lost in translation.

...[W]e must not let it enter our minds that there may be no validity in argument. On the contrary we should recognize that we ourselves are still intellectual invalids; but that we must brace ourselves and do our best to become healthy... No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than that of developing a dislike for argument.

We now live in a world where counter-intuitive bullshitting is valorized, where the pose of argument is more important than the actual pursuit of truth, where clever answers take precedence over profound questions.

We seldom learn much from someone with whom we agree.

We sometimes agree with a statement until we get to the name of the person to whom it is attributed.

Those who invalidate reason, ought seriously to consider, 'whether they argue against reason, with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle, that they are laboring to dethrone;' but if they argue without reason, (which, in order to be consistent with themselves, they must do,) they are out of the reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.

We were having an absurd and inappropriate argument because in the wake of death every single thing on earth feels absurd and inappropriate.

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

What are they fighting about?” Saba listened for a moment and closed her eyed in frustration. “They’re arguing scripture.” “Your brother is arguing scripture? With an angel?

What came next wasn't exactly silence, because although it was quiet, a thousand things were being said. I hated that part about an unhappy household--that feeling of being perched and listening, the way an animal must feel at night in the dark, assessing danger.

What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. Becoming a team didn't mean the end of their arguments. But it did mean that the arguments became a part of the adventure, became discussions not threats. To an outsider the arguments would appear to be the same because feeling like part of a team is something that happens invisibly. You might call it caring. You could even call it love. And it is very rarely, indeed, that it happens to two people at the same time-- especially a brother and a sister who had always spent more time with activities than they had with each other.

What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.

What is amazing but understandable is how you moved from one subject to another. This often occurs when one's argument is weak and unsubstantiated.

What's more, I believe in argument and I even love it. Argument is our most steadfast pathway toward truth, for it is the only proven arbalest against superstitious thinking, or lackadaisical axioms.

What was that about?” he asked his voice deep with a bitter distain. I raised an eyebrow at him, “What was what about?” “All that, ‘Are-you-okay?’ and ‘Do-you-want-to-talk-about-it?’ crap.” “I was being nice. You know, that thing you being the total opposite of right now.

What will it be in the end? One flies to the east, the other to the west; they lose the principle, dispersing it in the crowd of incidents: after an hour of tempest, they know not what they seek: one is low, the other high, and a third wide. One catches at a word and a simile; another is no longer sensible of what is said in opposition to him, and thinks only of going on at his own rate, not of answering you: another, finding himself too weak to make good his rest, fears all, refuses all, at the very beginning, confounds the subject; or, in the very height of the dispute, stops short and is silent, by a peevish ignorance affecting a proud contempt or a foolishly modest avoidance of further debate: provided this man strikes, he cares not how much he lays himself open; the other counts his words and weighs them for reasons; another only brawls and uses the advantage of his lungs. Here’s one who learnedly concludes against himself, and another, who deafens you with prefaces and senseless digressions: another falls into downright railing, and seeks a quarrel after the German fashion, to disengage himself from a wit that presses too hard upon him: and a last man sees nothing into the reason of the thing, but draws a line of circumvallation about you of dialectic clauses, and the formulas of his art.

When a lady does consent to listen to an argument against her own opinions, she is always predetermined to withstand it - to listen only with her bodily ears, keeping the mental organs resolutely closed against the strongest reasoning.

When a political opponent resorts to the racist card, it's a sure sign of moral bankruptcy: there's no decent argument left in the armoury.

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

When I battle wits with Jarod Kintz I always feel like I need to take my brain out to give him a transplant. Bad part is we don't have any.

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 variance of perception, for mindful debate: that the heart is meant to create a bit of bias on certain issues; as between one another, they weigh and balance. For not all hearts are the same.

When making a point, there are 2 types of people who may disagree with you: those who can support their reasons, and the childish ones who are too worried about being told what to do.

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