Best 867 quotes in «argument quotes» category

PRESIDENT BARTLETT: "See how benevolent I can be when everybody just does what I tell them.

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 with her? Proctor: (stubbornly) For a moment alone, aye. Elizabeth: Why, then, it is not as you told me. Proctor: (his anger rising) For a moment, I say. The others come in soon after. Elizabeth: (as if she has lost all faith in him) Do as you wish then. (she turns) Proctor: Woman. (she turns to him) I'll not have your suspicion any more. Elizabeth: (a little loftily) I have no- Proctor: I'll not have it! Elizabeth: Then let you not earn it. Proctor: Now look you- Elizabeth: I see what I see, John.

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.

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

Rights begin where love ends. Shall we argue over who is the most to blame?

Repetition of an argument proves your determination, not truth.

She argued with him timidly, yet the awareness of this timidity was enough to push her on.

Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument. Forget the years; forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!

Silence is an arguement hard to refute

Silence is the best defence for any argument.

She is never going to let me live down that stupid Thanksgiving," Kai says. I can't help but take the bait. "You made prime rib!" "It was delicious," Kai says, shrugging. "IT WAS BEEF! You can't have beef on Thanksgiving, except for appetizers like meatballs or something. You have TURKEY on Thanksgiving." Last Thanksgiving I spent with Phil and Kai, since I was orphaned and separated and Gilly couldn't make it from London. Everything was delicious, but it was like a dinner party and not Thanksgiving. The prime rib wasn't the only anomaly. No mashed potatoes or stuffing or sweet potatoes with marshmallows or green bean casserole. He had acorn squash with cippolini onions and balsamic glaze. Asparagus almondine. Corn custard with oyster mushrooms. Wild rice with currants and pistachios and mint. All amazing and perfectly cooked and balanced, and not remotely what I wanted for Thanksgiving. When I refused to take leftovers, his feelings were hurt, and when he got to the store two days later, he let me know. "Look," Kai says with infinite patience. "For a week we prepped for the Thanksgiving pickups." He ticks off on his fingers the classic menu we developed together for the customers who wanted a traditional meal without the guilt. "Herb-brined turkey breasts with apricot glaze and roasted shallot jus. Stuffing muffins with sage and pumpkin seeds. Cranberry sauce with dried cherries and port. Pumpkin soup, and healthy mashed potatoes, and glazed sweet potatoes with orange and thyme, and green beans with wild mushroom ragu, and roasted brussels sprouts, and pumpkin mousse and apple cake. We cooked Thanksgiving and tasted Thanksgiving and took Thanksgiving leftovers home at the end of the day. I just thought you would be SICK OF TURKEY!

Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature. [By 9th century Jain (the religion of Jainism) Acharya, Jinasena, in his work, Mahapurana, a major Jain text. The Jains have never believed in any gods as creators of the universe, unlike most other religions, and have focused on acting morally on Earth rather than wasting time supplicating the supernatural.]

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

Silence isn't always agreement. Sometimes people no longer argue because they no longer care.

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.

Sometimes, silence is the best way to win an argument.

Some topics seem to be nothing but philosophical circles designed to lure the unsuspecting ant to its death.

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

That leaves the category of pasture-raised chickens. It seems they’re living the poultry dream—and, according to Jason, we could be, too. I nod as I take another swallow of beer. I don’t say that it sounds like an enormous amount of work or that we live in arguably one of the harshest climates in the continental United States. Nor do I point out that having spent our entire careers jockeying keyboards to make a living, we are not farmers. So while I don’t exactly tune him out, I become a passive listener. A very passive listener. Poultry isn’t exactly the foreplay talk I was hoping for, so instead I just enjoy the rhythm and cadence of his voice. I hear something about pastured hens for- aging on fresh grasses producing healthier, delicious eggs with less fat and cholesterol, something about the local food movement and its ability to remake America’s food system. I signal the server for a second beer and let it all wash over me with an occasional nod until an utterly un-ignorable statement pulls me out. “This is the kind of farm I want to start.” Now I’m listening. In fact, I’m listening so hard I realize that this particular corner of the restaurant is a convergence point for the piped-in music from two separate rooms, and they’re competing against each other like dueling mariachi bands.

The Angel (in Joshua) declared that he was born leader and indicated that he was in the army of the Lord. The Lord was the commander of that angel, and he is our commander still. We favor no human on either side of any argument.

...some student asked if he [Larry Summers] didn’t have essentially the same relationship with Bob Rubin. Wasn’t Summer’s opposition to capital controls just a sop to Wall Street banks, which wanted to recoup their risky investments regardless of how doing so affected the country in which they had invested? “Summers just lost it,” said one audience member, a business school student. “he looked at the person and said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about and how dare you ask this question of the president of Harvard?

That's just your persecution complex talking. Maybe you feel like I'm looking down on you because you're simply conscious of your own inferiority?

That's what you think of me, is it, girl?" said his lordship, a glint in his eyes. "Oh, no!" she responded, dropping him a curtsy. "It's what I say, sir! You must know that my featherheaded Mama has taught me to behave with all the propriety in the world! To tell you what I think of you would be to sink myself quite below reproach!

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.

The danger of tolerating any hurtful behavior is that it can all too quickly become the norm. If we allow ourselves to "get away" with anything we know to be destructive - such as slapping a child or partner in the face - without taking responsibility for the gravity of what we have done, we are that much more likely to minimize the offense: "I may have overreacted, but she's got to learn not to set me off like that." . . . "because the partner is perceived as the cause of the violence, the perpetrator feels justified in using it." Once the actions are justified, they are more likely to be repeated. It is also important to remember that, in most relationships, both parties engage in some form of the abuses listed above. Angry remarks or mildly aggressive actions - insulting someone's intelligence, throwing a plate of food against the wall - can both provoke and be used to justify retaliatory actions that may be more dangerous, like pushing and shoving someone down the stairs. On the other hand, one sort of abuse does not necessarily lead to another. Rather, whether or not the violence escalates depends on the person committing it.

The definition of stupid is the inabilitly to see another side to an argument other than one's own.

The arguments themselves did not appear to me to be any better simply because they were better expressed; eloquence did not make them true." St. Augustine page 85

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.

The distance between you and the door when you have had enough of your spouse is love.

The end side of the argument is that life is build upon arrogance and hypocricity.

The fastest way to end an argument with your wife is to admit she’s right.

The favorite part of any conversation is when people think you’ll argue with them and then you agree.

The great masters of modern analysis are Lagrange, Laplace, and Gauss, who were contemporaries. It is interesting to note the marked contrast in their styles. Lagrange is perfect both in form and matter, he is careful to explain his procedure, and though his arguments are general they are easy to follow. Laplace on the other hand explains nothing, is indifferent to style, and, if satisfied that his results are correct, is content to leave them either with no proof or with a faulty one. Gauss is as exact and elegant as Lagrange, but even more difficult to follow than Laplace, for he removes every trace of the analysis by which he reached his results, and studies to give a proof which while rigorous shall be as concise and synthetical as possible.

[T]he important thing is that you should not argue with them. Communism has become an intensely dogmatic and almost mystical religion, and whatever you say, they have ways of twisting into shapes which put you in some lower category of mankind.

The majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own judgement

The most important tactic in an argument next to being right is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face.

The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality

Then everyone would retreat for a nap, after which we would have coffee and cake, sometimes an argument.

The only truths worth arguing about are those truths that could prevent or lead to circumstances that may bite us in the rear sooner or later.

The easiest way to become a fool, is to argue with one.

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

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 number of people that reside on our side will be the determination for a good result. Or a terrible one.

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.

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 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.

There comes a point in some conversations where I simply quit and let reality do my talking for me.

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.

The purpose of arguing is not to win. Arguing is not a game. It's not, "I'm cleverer than you are." The purpose of argument is like the purpose of science: to know. It's a means, not the only means, of knowing, of transferring us from ignorance to knowledge, a way of getting out of that cave. Philosophy is, in some obvious ways, not like what we today call science, but in some other less than obvious ways, it's very similar to what we today call science.

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.