Quotes About Debate

Christopher Hitchens

Some people you struggle to argue with - they've got a lot of strong backing to what they say and what they do.

There actually have never been many shows as equally balanced as 'Crossfire.'

People who are talking about banning IPL, they should think about many other things that are troubling the country. People who want to look after IPL will do.

It is part of our political thinking that democracy is a battle of ideas.

Battles in the Legislature can be tough.

I'm a real believer in counter-speech when it comes to crazy stuff we don't like.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, AND OTHER ESSAYS ON RELIGION AND RELATED SUBJECTS

The measure of our political and cultural health cannot be whether we all agree on all things at all times. We don't, and we won't. Disagreement and debate—including ferocious disagreement and exhausting debate—are hallmarks of American politics.

By closing our minds to the even remote possibility that a political leader with whom we nearly always disagree might have a point about a particular matter is to preemptively surrender the capacity of the mind to shape our public lives.

Half a world away, on the same Friday, the Chamber of Deputies in France opened debate on paying the United States a debt of 25 million francs (about $5 million) as an indemnity for French damage to American shipping during the Napoleonic wars. France had agreed to pay the money under an 1831 treaty, but after four days of consideration, by a margin of eight, France declined to honor its obligations.

The Jefferson style – cultivate his elders, make himself pleasant to his contemporaries, and used his pen and his intellect to shape the debate – arm him well for the national arena.

We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives." He

There's an old Internet adage that as soon as you compare something to the Nazis you lose the argument.

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency. Across the West, this was the most glorious boon of World War I.

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency.

And you can't force someone to believe, not even with better and louder and more virtuous arguments, not even with irrefutable evidence

Comer animales, como el aborto, es uno de esos temas en los que es imposible saber de manera definitiva algunos de los detalles mas importantes. (¿Cuándo es un feto una persona real y no potencial? ¿Cómo es en verdad la experiencia animal?), lo cual remueve las desazones más profundas de uno y a menudo provoca actitudes defensivas o agresivas.

The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued.

By now, almost all of the shtetl's three hundred–odd citizens had gathered to debate that about which they knew nothing. The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued. There was nothing new in this.

In familia mea, tata este campion mondial la inchis discutii.

almost all of the shtetl's three hundred–odd citizens had gathered to debate that about which they knew nothing. The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued. There was nothing new in this. A month before there had been the question of whether it might send a better message to the children to plug, finally, the bagel's hole.

A questo punto, quasi tutti i trecento e passa cittadini dello Shtetl si radunarono per dibattere quella faccenda di cui non sapevano nulla. E meno un cittadino ne sapeva, più era granitico nelle sue argomentazioni. Niente di nuovo in questo.

long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there—not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die.