Quotes About Debate

Thanks to evolution, half of all Americans don't believe in evolution.

Christianity is] the most ... perverted system that ever shone on man.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance

Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument.

It is the duty of every American citizen to take part in a vigorous debate on the issues of the day.

Error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.

Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.

It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.

This will brand you as a member of the "fact-based community," and if, as is likely, your interlocutor is a member of the "faith-based community," no amount of mere fact is going to get you anywhere.

My advice to an ordinary religious man, supposing anyone were to desire my advice on this point, would be to avoid all arguments about religion, and especially about the existence of God.

The row ostensibly has to do with tables versus CSS, a controversial issue of the time, which has always, given its level of passion, struck Maxine as somehow religious. She imagines it will be difficult, no matter which side prevails, to appreciate, ten years from now, the all-consuming nature of the dispute.

The concept of "microaggression" is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be "hate speech," instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.

It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.

Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.

Have you gone crazy, Lefty?" "No. On the contrary, I have become educated." "Sometimes that's worse, these days.

In the complexities of real life, seldom is any argument right 100 percent of the time or wrong 100 percent of the time.

The swirl of their buzzwords—"access," "stigma," "progressive," "diversity," "crisis," etc.—shows a discernible pattern. What these innumerable buzzwords have in common is that they either (1) preempt issues rather than debate them, (2) set the anointed and the benighted on different moral and intellectual planes, or (3) evade the issue of personal responsibility

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said: "You're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts.

The political left's attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said: "You're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts."1

Indeed, the premise of their work is that they can't win in a fair and open debate.

Earlier feminists were almost universally pro-choice and have dominated political debate until now. Having access to abortion was viewed as the only way women could have full equality with men, who, until recently, couldn't get pregnant.