Quotes About Debate

As a veteran of the diet wars, I think it's time to call a truce. Rather than hear experts argue, most people want practical information they can use.

By no definition of any modern scientist is intelligent design science, and it's a waste of our students' time to subject them to it.

I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.

Evolution is not truth; it is merely a hypothesis-it is millions of guesses strung together.

Where two Greeks are gathered together, there will be at least three political parties represented, and possibly more.

Are you afraid of a healthy argument? Or is it that you are so convinced that you are right that my opinion is of no interest to you?

It began with meetings, five months before the Apollo 11 launch. The newly formed Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing gathered to debate the appropriateness of planting a flag on the moon.

Our hair is as much as 14 percent L-cysteine, an amino acid commonly used to make meat flavorings and to elasticize dough in commercial baking. How commonly? Enough to merit debate among scholars of Jewish dietary law, or kashrut. "Human hair, while not particularly appetizing, is Kosher

The ability to discuss things was still the most highly valued commodity in the Soviet Union.

Consider, for example, Jefferson's essay, penned in 1764 at the age of twenty-one, on the question, "Whether Christianity is part of the Common Law?"63 His answer was confident and unequivocal: "We may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.

One of the many drawbacks of this I teach what I am approach is that it stifles classroom discussion. Any disagreement with the professor's expertise comes off as an ad hominem attack.

We Deveauxs preferred to talk you to death, rather than face you in physical combat.

She spent the entire day at the house, debating the issue with herself. First, she watched TV. British television seemed to consist mostly of makeover shows. Garden makeovers. Fashion makeovers. House makeovers. Everything relating to change. It seemed like a hint. Change something. Make a move. She

I will not help you to pretend that I have a chance. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognized. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument. I will not help you to pretend that you are administering justice.

Opinion without a rational process.

But why?" "You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question debatable?

I do not grant the terms of reason to men who propose to deprive me of reason. I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think. I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer's wish to kill me.

We in this country have lost the art of engaging with the opposition.

The most effective debate answers, it seemed, were designed not to illuminate but to evoke an emotion, or identify the enemy, or signal to a constituency that you, more than anyone else on that stage, were and would always be on their side.

Please proceed, Governor.

As Tim aptly described it, Larry could hear your arguments, restate them better than you could, and then show why you were wrong.

When someone else offered up the theory that we had all died and entered purgatory, where we were destined to debate Hillary for all eternity, no one laughed. It felt too close to the truth.

Over time, my staff and I became so resigned to this style of "he said / he said" coverage that we could joke about it. ("In dueling press conferences today, the debate over the shape of planet Earth heated up, with President Obama—who claims the Earth is round—coming under withering attack from Republicans who insist that the White House has covered up documents proving the Earth is flat.")

The talkers are rising above the thinkers.