Quotes About Debate

Anyone who silences someone else because they believe the other person's opinion is false assumes infallibility. They must be absolutely certain that they are correct on the matter.

If you only know your own side of a case, then your belief is likely to be inadequate. You need to be able to refute counter-arguments to your position otherwise you aren't justified in your belief even if it happens to be true.

It is not uncommon for a leader to win a debate - or even an election - who is intellectually inferior to his opponent but is better able to incite the emotions of the masses.

if you ask me whether or not I'm an atheist, I wouldn't even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I'm supposed not to believe in, and I've never seen an explanation.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Within the reigning social order, the general public must remain an object of manipulation, not a participant in thought, debate, and decision.

So what the media do, in effect, is to take the set of assumptions which express the basic ideas of the propaganda system, whether about the Cold War or the economic system or the "national interest" and so on, and then present a range of debate within that framework—so the debate only enhances the strength of the assumptions, ingraining them in people's minds as the entire possible spectrum of opinion that there is.

The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e. so long as it isn't democracy.

what are called opinions "on the left" and "on the right" in the media represent only a limited spectrum of debate, which reflects the range of needs of private power—but there's essentially nothing beyond those "acceptable" positions.

The U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit indeed encourage spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness

these six corporations, and more precisely, the key decision makers within them, set the boundaries on acceptable debate on what's socially, politically, economically possible. They make their decisions on those things based on profit maximization, both short and long term. If you think they're making their decisions on anything else, you are mistaken.

they don't even mention the logical possibility of a third position: namely, that the United States did not have the right, either the legal or the moral right, to intervene by force in the internal affairs of Vietnam. We leave to history the task of judging the debate between the hawks and the respectable doves, but the third position, opposed to the other two, is excluded from discussion.

So these six corporations, and more precisely, the key decision makers within them, set the boundaries on acceptable debate on what's socially, politically, economically possible.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

You can't argue with math, Carter. You'll always lose.

Mostly, we argued about who which of us was better at arguing, and particularly about who had won the previous argument.

We argued about how hard it would be to ride a bear, assuming said bear was muzzled.

This is democracy," she says. "It is strange. And it is messy. It's not about getting it right. It's about trying to get it right.

Unhealthy societies quashed truth-tellers, hid facts, and curtailed debate (often at the end of a sword or rifle). Information, as the saying went, wanted to be free.

I would rather be wrong, by God, with Plato than be correct with those men.

Nothing is too absurd for some philosopher to have said it.

She knew he was telling the truth, the kind of unsavoury truth that only monsters were at liberty to tell. He had no need to flatter or cajole; he had no philosophy to debate, or sermon to deliver. His awful nakedness was a kind of sophistication. Past the lies of faith, and into purer realms.

life is an argument with the world over time.