Quotes About Debate

You may be right, dead right, as you speed along in your argument; but as far as changing another's mind is concerned, you will probably be just as futile as if you were wrong.

He asked questions with which his opponent would have to agree. He kept on winning one admission after another until he had an armful of yeses. He kept on asking questions until finally, almost without realizing it, his opponents found themselves embracing a conclusion they would have bitterly denied a few minutes previously.

it is well to heed the old adage—" listen to both sides of the story." Among the many reasons for this, and perhaps most important, is the fact that if everyone is against something (particularly heroin addiction), one can assume that there is something which can be said in its favor.

if you didn't voice your opinion, [Steve Jobs] would mow you down, said Cook. He takes contrary positions to create more discussion, because it may lead to a better result. So if you don't feel comfortable disagreeing, then you'll never survive.

Socrates' method of building an argument through gentle queries, he "dropped my abrupt contradiction" style of argument and "put on the humbler enquirer" of the Socratic method. By asking what seemed to be innocent questions, Franklin would draw people into making concessions that would gradually prove whatever point he was trying to assert.

Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.

Likewise, what emphasis should be put on great individuals versus on cultural currents has long been a matter of dispute;

In addition to such topics of debate, Franklin laid out a guide for the type of conversational contributions each member could usefully make. There were twenty-four in all, and because their practicality is so revealing of Franklin's purposeful approach, they are worth excerpting at length:

Being "disputatious," he concluded, was "a very bad habit" because contradicting people produced "disgusts and perhaps enmities.

he "dropped my abrupt contradiction" style of argument and "put on the humbler enquirer" of the Socratic method.

It is ill arguing against anything from its misuse.

Mr. Sampson, you forget the difference between Plato and Zenocrates.

The best way to reduce opponents' overconfidence and make them open to your position might seem to be an overwhelming argument that shows them why they are wrong and why you are right. Sometimes that works, but only rarely. What usually works better is to ask questions—in particular, to ask opponents for reasons. Questions are often more powerful than assertions.

Poultry processing plants had become the front lines in the nation's increasingly heated debate over immigration policy. They offered low-paying, dangerous work in revolting conditions and at an unrelenting pace, work Americans seemed less willing to do than immigrants, at least for the wages offered.

It's funny to hear priests and nuns argue with each other.

The political impact of new technologies has been massive. They shape the nature of our reasoning and our discourse. They've moved us away from a public square tempered by logic, debate, and reflection based on the printed word, to a visual and sensory one, emotionally charged and spontaneous.

The second way we lose the habit of truth is by refusing to think clearly when damaging cultural trends become political orthodoxies. The last thing too many people want is to be seen as retrograde in their views when the cost may be social exile. The same-sex marriage debate was, and remains, a classic case.

I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 'Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremem) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting an animal to death?' I forget the decision.

If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to the standards of that context, any scientific theory is turned into mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample.

A great philosophy is not one that passes final judgments and establishes ultimate truth. It is one that causes uneasiness and starts commotion.

There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people... Religion, Politics, and The Great Pumpkin.

Ridicule is the first and last argument of a fool

Ridicule is the first and last argument of fools.

On September 26, 1789, members debated a resolution introduced by Aedanus Burke of South Carolina, charging journalists with having "misrepresented these debates in the most glaring deviations from truth," and with "throwing over the whole proceedings a thick veil of misrepresentation and error.