Best 472 quotes in «debate quotes» category

This country is about, in my judgment, aggressive, open debate. There is an old saying: When everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking very much.

This is the debate we have every time we talk about the minimum wage, that if we raise it even 50 cents, that it means employers are just going to shut down. It's not true.

Trump is loose and obvious with his facial expressions. You could watch Donald Trump in a debate and not hear any of the words and you'll still get a sense for when he's pleased, when he's angry and when he's not.

To cut 1930s jobless, FDR taxed corps and rich. Govt used money to hire many millions. Worked then; would now again. Why no debate on that?

To pull off successful attacks in debates, you have to execute with nuance and subtlety. It has to be artful.

To dispute with a drunkard is to debate with an empty house.

We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration!

Until the late-nineteenth-century the House of Commons maintained a formal ban on the reporting of its debates.

Use "entropy" and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what "entropy" is.

We don’t have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity, it’s written in the Bible.

We are not getting rid of carriers any time soon. This is both because of their utility and also because of their role in Navy culture and in the defense-industrial complex. It is an academic debate.

We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul must withdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide the flesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely.

We mistake politics for legislative debate. You can be passionate without being personal.

We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.

Well, first of all, no professor should be able to say, I refuse to defend my position. I refuse to debate my position.

Well, to tell you truth, I have learned a long time ago that the trick when doing a debate, any kind of debate, is to just turn off the judgment switch in my head.

We must learn to outgrow our egos in exchange for constructive dialogue rather than debate.  In addition, we must be capable of stating problems and proposing solutions clearly and succinctly, without distortion of meaning or misunderstanding, even when these solutions are radically opposed to accepted norms.

We need to punch back against the extremes of both the left and the right and define the terms of the debate ourselves.

We need a big debate in society about how we are going to shape Europe and tame capitalism. A government must provide direction and make concrete proposals. It is one of Angela Merkel's biggest failings that she doesn't do this.

We now have an opportunity, though, to do something we didn't do in the industrial age, and that is to get a leg up on this, to bring the public in quickly, to have an informed debate.

What intrigued me most was not the technology as such but the questions about the human goods, the fundamental human values and virtues that are raised by debates over biotechnology.

We shall seek debate without division or rancour.

We should vigorously debate policy differences. We have too much all-or-nothing in American politics.

When a politician says the debate is over, you can be sure of two things; the debate is raging; and he's losing it.

What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this.

What scared me in that debate is that it's not about the ownership rules at all. The vast majority of people don't even know what the rules say, to be perfectly candid. Name all six of them.

When anarchists are having a debate, they're having a debate about tactics, 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?' The question isn't 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?', the primary question is how do you build confidence among the masses of people who experience hierarchies, who experience exploitation, who experience oppression.

Whenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate, it is an implicit concession they have lost the fight

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories.

When we observe contemporary society one thing strikes us. We debate but make no progress. Why? Because as peoples we do not yet trust each other.

Which is ideology? Which not? You shall know them by their assertion of truth, their contempt for considered reflection, and their fear of debate.

When you exist in the centre of a debate, as a topic, a hypothesis - otherised and stigmatised - you become the prop in a proposition.

Whether splendidly isolated or dangerously isolated, I will not now debate; but for my part, I think splendidly isolated, because the isolation of England comes from her superiority.

Whether someone else would have played Superman better or worse would be up for a lot of debate on the internet forums, I'm sure.

While the debate on the Patriot Act is far from over, it is important that all Americans continue in this dialogue and work together to ensure greater security for our nation.

You can't debate satire. Either you get it or you don't.

Whoever sets the agenda controls the outcome of the debate

You can only have one aim per debate.

Why was Donald Trump's decision not to participate in the Fox debate such a big deal?

Wit has its place in debate; in controversy it is a legitimate weapon, offensive and defensive.

You can see why there are more people wanting to come from economically-distressed areas, and they can't all come to America. So it gets into the valid, legitimate debate over immigration as to how do we choose. Do we have a diversity lottery and take people from everywhere, do we base it more on merit?

All attempts to create something admirable are the weapons of evil. You may think you are practising benevolence and righteousness, but in effect you will be creating a kind of artificiality. Where a model exists, copies will be made of it; where success has been gained, boasting follows; where debate exists, there will be outbreaks of hostility.

A good objection helps one forward, a shallow objection, even if it is valid, is wearisome. ... The objection does not seize the matter by its root, where the life is, but so far outside that nothing can be rectified even if it is wrong. A good objection helps directly towards a solution, a shallow one must first be overcome and can, from then on, be left to one side. Just as a tree bends at a knot in the trunk in order to grow on.

A keen wit stabs harder than a finely honed argument.

A lively discussion is usually helpful, because the hottest fire makes the hardest steel.

Allegations of multi-perpetrator and multi-victim sexual abuse emerged to public awareness in the early 1980s contemporaneously with the denials of the accused and their supporters. Multi-perpetrator sexual offences are typically more sadistic than solo offences and organised sexual abuse is no exception. Adults and children with histories of organised abuse have described lives marked by torturous and sometimes ritualistic sexual abuse arranged by family members and other care-givers and authority figures. It is widely acknowledged, at least in theory, that sexual abuse can take severe forms, but when disclosures of such abuse occur, they are routinely subject to contestation and challenge. People accused of organised, sadistic or ritualistic abuse have protested that their accusers are liars and fantasists, or else innocents led astray by overly zealous investigators. This was an argument that many journalists and academics have found more convincing than the testimony of alleged victims.

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.

Abstaining from speech marks him who is obeying the spontaneity of his nature. A violent wind does not last for a whole morning; a sudden rain does not last for the whole day. To whom is it that these (two) things are owing? To Heaven and Earth. If Heaven and Earth cannot make such (spasmodic) actings last long, how much less can a man!

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.

A good way to judge a debate is to note who personally insulted someone first, insults are usually required when pleasing answers do not exist.