Quotes About Debate

Existe la más grande diferencia entre presumir que una opinión es verdadera, porque oportunamente no ha sido refutada, y suponer que es verdadera a fin de no permitir su refutación.

Bir görüÅŸün yararl?l??? da kendi ba??na bir görüÅŸtür; görüÅŸün kendisi kadar tart??mal?, tart??maya aç?k ve tart??ma gerektiren bir ÅŸeydir.

is likely soon to make itself recognized as the vital question of the future.

only through diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.

Se c'è qualcuno che contesta un'opinione comunemente accettata, o che lo farebbe se solo la legge o l'opinione pubblica glielo consentissero, non abbiamo che da ringraziarlo, spalancare la nostra mente per ascoltarlo, rallegrarci che ci sia qualcuno pronto a fare per noi quel che ci costerebbe ben più fatica fare da soli, sempre che almeno un po' ci importi della certezza o della vitalità delle nostre convinzioni.

S'il y a des gens pour contester une opinion reçue ou pour désirer le faire si la loi ou l'opinion publique le leur permet, il faut les en remercier, ouvrir nos esprits à leurs paroles et nous réjouir qu'il y en ait qui fassent pour nous ce que nous devrions prendre davantage la peine de faire, si tant est que la certitude ou la vitalité de nos convictions nous importe.

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

All but invisible to the outside world, the debate over the direction of the Federated Colored Catholics remains instructive. Most important, it marks the first significant break in the racialism undergirding so much of American Catholicism in the first part of the twentieth century. Both Thomas Turner and John LaFarge opposed discrimination. The debate was how to end it.

Being a true scholar means considering all opinions NOT just the ones we agree with.

Global Warming is not science; it's great political science.

a debate isn't a competition, it's a civil war.

Very few of the so-called liberals are open-minded.... They shout you down and won't let you speak if you disagree with them.

Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you.

What is more, nobody has ever actually proved him wrong. His chief trouble was that he usually provided such large, indigestible slabs that they stuck in all gullets—even mine, and I would class myself as a fairly wide-gulleted type.

He detested objective truths, the burden of argument, sustained reasoning. He disliked demonstrating, he wanted to convince no one. Others are a dialectician's invention.

Fanaticism is the death of conversation. We do not gossip with a candidate for martyrdom. What are we to say to someone who refuses to penetrate our reasons and who, the moment we do not bow to his, would rather die than yield? Give us dilettantes and sophists, who at least espouse all reasons...

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.

The debates in the American Congress have little teaching efficacy; it is the characteristic vice of Presidential government to deprive them of that efficacy; in that government a debate in the legislature has little effect, for it cannot turn out the executive, and the executive can veto all it decides.

But a government by discussion, if it can be borne, at once breaks down the yoke of fixed custom.

A community founded upon argument would soon be a community no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent elements.

Our whole political machinery presupposes a people so fundamentally at one that they can safely afford to bicker.

Arguments may be refuted, but who, it has been asked, can answer a sneer?

Don't take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side

After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land.