Quotes About Debate

same battles were repeatedly replayed, marking out the library as a political space. Should readers in the new nineteenth-century public libraries have the books that they desired, or books that would make them better, more cultured people? This raging debate was still echoing deep into the twentieth century:

A long list of propositions does not necessarily make a coherent argument

I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire,' proclaimed Churchill defending the partisanship of the British Gazette in a Commons debate on the Strike on 7 July. 'When you are in a great difficulty and in a fight of this kind, however unfortunate it may be, it is absolutely no use people pretending they do not know what side they are on.

recalled the rancorous, partisan tempers and epithets

Historians still debate how many people perished during the partition of British India into India and Pakistan in late 1947: most estimate more than half a million but some think twice that, and at least sixteen million were permanently displaced.

ad hominem attack

Churchill sensed he was speaking into a void, and years later he wrote of that debate, 'I felt a sensation of despair. To be so entirely convinced and vindicated in a matter of life and death to one's country, and not to be able to make Parliament and the nation heed the warning, or bow to the proof by taking action, was an experience most painful.

The first stage should be free discussion, in which all points of view and all aspects of an issue are openly welcomed and debated. The greater the disagreement and controversy, the more important becomes the word free.

Profound insights arise only in debate, with a possibility of counterargument, only when there is a possibility of expressing not only correct ideas but also dubious ideas.

Da ciò si evince come la difesa più efficace dal dominio intellettuale sia insultare come si deve l'intellettuale che prova a esercitarlo.

Fight like you're right, listen like you're wrong.

Do I have opinions that might piss people off? Yes - that's what I'm here for.

Archaic Hebrew ... no general agreement among scholars regarding this term.

A day without an argument is like an egg without salt.

Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect." "Yes, it is. But it is politically correct." (The Rise of Political Correctness)

No matter what argument you make against evolution, the response is Well, you know, it's possible to believe in evolution and believe in God. Yes, and it's possible to believe in Spiderman and believe in God, but that doesn't prove Spiderman is true.

I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am.

The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media will only refer to partial birth abortion as 'what its opponents refer to as partial birth abortions.' What do its supporters call it? Casual Fridays? Bean-with-bacon potato chip dip? Uh . . . Steve?

Even if evolution were true, it wouldn't disprove God. God has performed more spectacular feats than evolution. It's not even a daunting challenge to a belief in God. If you want something that complicates a belief in God, try coming to terms with Michael Moore being one of God's special creatures.

You know you're doing something right when you've reduced hordes of liberals to blind, sputtering rage.

Even if trolley problems were a realistic concern for AVs, it is not clear what, if anything, regulators or companies developing AVs should do about them. The trolley problem is an intensely debated thought experiment precisely because there isn't a consensus on what should be done.

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.

A person with 'oppositional conversational style' is a person who, in conversation, disagrees with and corrects whatever you say. He or she may do this in a friendly way, or a belligerent way, but this person frames remarks in opposition to whatever you venture.

Stoicism is of no use to me whatsoever. What I'm a big believer in is talking about everything until you're blue in the face.