Quotes About Debate

Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out by just sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A

We can use logic when we want to, of course. We have tools of reason at our command; but according to at least some experts1 we have those tools not to glean truth from falsehood but to help us win arguments; to make others do what we want; to use as a weapon. It's rhetoric and manipulation that evolution selected for: logic just tagged along as a side effect. Sweeping oratory, rational debate, it's all just a way to bend others to your will.

Beni susturan ?ey nefretimdi. En basit içtimaî dâvalar? anlamayacak kadar yabanc? tesirler alt?nda ?ahsiyetlerini kaybeden bu insanlarla münaka?aya mecbur olman?n küçüklü?ünden muzdariptim.

Never resolve with violence what can be addressed with cutting commentary.

Talk radio has almost ruined the sports fan.

If forecasters can keep questioning themselves and their teammates, and welcome vigorous debate, the group can become more than the sum of its parts.

Here's my long-term prediction for Long Now. When the Long Now audience of 2515 looks back on the audience of 2015, their level of contempt for how we go about judging political debate will be roughly comparable to the level of contempt we have for the 1692 Salem witch trials.

No one played devil's advocate, a figure that every group needs to avoid foolish or even disastrous decisions like this. It was reminiscent of President John Kennedy's "disastrous" decision to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.11

Contemporary materialism is not a solution but a stubborn refusal to face up to the problem.

Religion long ago modified the character of ethical discussion by undermining the original egalitarianism.

I came to the conclusion that an enormous amount of research was needed to form an opinion on anything, and therefore abandoned politics altogether as a topic of conversation.

philosophers will forever wrangle about the true nature of science as a prelude to their dream of the final knockdown argument which will silence all doubt and opposition to their own favorite utopia.

arm's length. By the end of Margaret Thatcher's tenure of office in 1990, the nature of government and of public debate and the division between public and private sectors had changed significantly. Political parties were forced to work on the basis of a new political agenda. Her successor as Conservative

debate" thus takes place among very few members. Most speeches are delivered from prepared notes and often have little

An Engineer is no match for a Historian with his dander up!

The corollary of this visceral desire to avoid confrontation at all costs is that debate and argument do not function as a means of resolving differences. Between the extremes of acquiescence and violence there is no middle ground. The

For those who hope that we can become collectively wiser, it was a bewildering fracas that looked less like a debate between great minds and more like a food fight between rival fraternities.

Modernist discourse [...] incorporates semantic devices - such as the labeling of theism as 'religion' and naturalism as 'science' - that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open.

Japanese "indifference to the Mystery of the Universe," my cousin's great-grandfather was wise enough to add, "is that which enables them to give more time and to spend more energy on the solution of the problems nearer at hand." · That same indifference binds them together, because there's no need for individual speculation or debate in a choir; Shinto, lacking arguments, cannot be refuted.

In the case of sociology however, we are always walking on hot coals, and the things we discuss are alive, they're not dead and buried

There is no future for the Labour party if the debate about our future becomes locked in an ideological battle between two competing visions of the past instead of building a new politics that can unite the country around a vision for the future.

Instant telecommunication allows better and updated information, lessons learnt and problems encountered to be exchanged and debated, it alerts us more quickly to problems and brings to many households around the world visions and information which hopefully spur us to action.

What is the effect of unlimited coinage of silver in this country? and I invite your attention to this particularly, because it is a question of vital importance.

As I have been saying for more than a year now, turning this vital mission over to the Iraqi people as soon as possible should remain a topic of debate for Congress while relying on our military commanders to set up the timetable.