Quotes About Debate

Until Christians can do a better job of seeing these issues and articulating them in terms of objective duty and virtue, the Jack Kevorkians will continue to win the "debate" (if that is what we should call the media rhetoric that surrounds the framing of moral dilemmas), precisely because the Kevorkians are on the side of individual rights.

Anybody who's in favor of gun control is a fucking moron.

I think the thing that the American people want is for the divisive debate on health care to stop.

La modestia conviene al sabio, pero no a las ideas que posee y que debe defender

The philosopher did not have a practical agenda. That was implicit in his concern for the general, not the particular. This made philosophical politics look attractively different from the self-seeking squabbling of party political debate. On the other hand, it made philosophical religion look, to some at least, reprehensibly theoretical and 'cold'.

Do you really think you are going to change anyone's mind? I always wonder, who are these people who spend all day on Internet message boards and comments sections getting really angry and trying to prove that their opinion is THE opinion that everyone should have.

El profesor señala con el dedo a un alumno y le dice: «¡Refúteme a Buñuel!» Y es cuestión de dos minutos.

Intellectual controversies tend to be like dog fights without the teeth, in which the barking not the biting does the damage.

Globalization, even if its nature and timing are still very much up for debate, has the salutary effect of challenging our most basic assumptions about space and time and therefore about society. The functioning of society depends on the regulation of space and time.

the ontological argument for the existence of God.

In the ensuing debate Madison declared that "opinions are not the objects of legislation," and he worried aloud, "How far will this go? It may extend to the liberty of speech and of the press." Finally,

After Rep. Martin Sweeney of Ohio delivered a scathing attack on the Roosevelt administration for allegedly using conscription as a way to get the United States into the war, Rep. Beverly Vincent of Kentucky, who was next to Sweeney, loudly muttered that he refused "to sit by a traitor." Sweeney swung at Vincent, who responded with a sharp right to the jaw that sent Sweeney staggering. It was, said the House doorkeeper, the best punch thrown by a member of Congress in fifty years.

There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken.

There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and those who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken.

For all their dissimilarities, the two men spoke a common language: violence. Both despised the Jeffersonian ideals of popular governance, reasoned debate, freedom of expression, an independent judiciary, and fair electoral competition. Both struck remorselessly at enemies within and outside their parties.

Thus was conceived a phenomenon that would split America from right to left and raise ominous questions—of a type we still face—about whether a democratic citizenry can be talked into betraying its own values.

Silence may be golden," I said, "but it won't win many arguments. If you have something to say, don't keep your ideas locked up; unclench your jaws and set those thoughts free. And don't be afraid to interrupt, because that may be the only way you are going to be heard.

When a dictator abuses his authority, there is no legal way to stop him. When a free society falters, we still have the ability—through open debate and the selection of new leaders—to remedy those shortcomings. We still have time to pick a better egg. That is democracy's comparative advantage, and it should be recognized and preserved.

The two major political parties in Australia are engaged in a furious debate about the federal budget. Neither of them finds it convenient to point out the obvious. This is that to resolve the fiscal deficit and to support spending at roughly the same share of GDP it has been for the last forty years, Australians will certainly pay more tax.

Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.

La cuestión de si sobrevivimos a estos peligros no es un tópico de debate científico, sino un tema de voluntad política.

you start repeating what's already been said, as lawyers have a natural inclination to

They were lawyers, trained to argue five sides of every issue.

I only debate my equals. All others, I teach.