Quotes About Debate

The debate in Australia over China has long been framed by a number of influential essays by Hugh White, a former bureaucrat and academic. White's thesis is summed up by the title of one of his books, The China Choice, which argued that Australia's refusal

Any work of architecture that has with it some discussion, some polemic, I think is good. It shows that people are interested, people are involved.

An important work of architecture will create polemics.

Interesting philosophy is rarely an examination of the pros and cons of a thesis. Usually it is, implicitly or explicitly, a contest between an entrenched vocabulary which has become a nuisance and a half-formed new vocabulary which vaguely promises great things.

Man sagte den Priestern Soltars nach,dass sie auf ewig das letzte Wort behielten. Nur die Priester sahen es angeblich anders ... und widersprachen dem Gerücht.

Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.

He that is not open to conviction, is not qualified for discussion.

I didn't like having reasonable arguments thrown at me.

You know I love you, right?" The urge to kiss her goodbye was so strong that I almost broke our rules. She smiled, beautiful and golden in the late morning light. "Not as much as I love you." "Oh, man. This is my dream come true: having an 'I love you more' debate. Here, I'll start. I love you more. Your turn." Sydney laughed and opened the door. "I've taken debate classes. You'd lose to my logic.

Oh, man. This is my dream come true: having an 'I love you more' debate.

The degree to which language exactly mirrors reality is debatable.

when people debate faith vs. science they've already missed the point. Faith is about embracing truth wherever it's found, and that of course includes science.) He's

The ancient sages said the words of the sacred text were black letters on a white page—there's all that white space, waiting to be filled with our responses and discussions and debates and opinions and longings and desires and wisdom and insights. We read the words, and then enter into the discussion that has been going on for thousands of years across cultures and continents.

Quietly, dispassionately, Russell would make sure the senator understood not only the reasons why he should take the same position on the bill that Russell was taking, but the reasons why he should take an opposing position.

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.

Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument.

Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either--he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days--since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other--with, of course, a day off each year for sheer solipsist debauchery.

Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it—especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken.

The duty of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition is to oppose.

Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness

Jubal, you talk like a harem guard trying to convince a whole man of the advantages of being a eunuch.

He never once repeated himself and he never used either profanity or obscenity. (I learned later that he saved those for very special occasions, which this wasn't.) But he described our shortcomings, physical, mental, moral, and genetic, in great and insulting detail. But somehow I was not insulted; I became greatly interested in studying his command of language. I wished that we had had him on our debate team.

Wishing to prove oneself right is the usual motive for scholarship.

To say John is anything, incidentally, always opens the door to spooks and metaphysical debate. The historical logic of Aristotelian philosophy as embedded in Standard English always carries an association of stasis with every is, unless the speaker or writer remembers to include a date, and even then linguistic habit will cause many to not notice the date and assume is means a stasis (an Aristotelian timeless essence or spook).