Quotes About Debate

The telling of history is, by its very nature, controversial, contentious, and contested; it advances by debate. This doesn't make history squishy, vague, and irrelevant. It makes it picky, demanding, and vital.

Nearly as soon as the war with Mexico began, members of Congress began debating what to do when it ended. They spat venom. They pulled guns. They unsheathed knives. Divisions of party were abandoned; the splinter in Congress was sectional. Before heading to the Capitol every morning, southern congressmen strapped bowie knives to their belts and tucked pistols into their pockets. Northerners, on principle, came unarmed.

I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.

I think it was Socrates who said if you can't win a one-way argument, just pretend that you can read your opponent's mind.

In a sad twist of fate, the bill to reauthorize the Patriot Act was debated on the floor of the House of Representatives the same day that terrorists struck again.

You change society by changing the wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political discussions are being made, and you will change the outcomes... You will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind.

A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.

I hate those Socratic dialogues where everything gets drawn out at the pace of an excessively logical snail.

You know what I'd love to read? A Dialogue between Bron and Shevek and Socrates. Socrates would love it too. I bet he wanted people who argued. You can tell he did, you can tell that's what he loved really, at least in The Symposium.

The Republic isn't as much fun as The Symposium. It's all long speeches, and nobody bursting in drunk to woo Socrates in the middle.

The point of new historical investigation is to disrupt the notion of fixity, to discover the nature of the debate or repression that leads to the appearance of timeless permanence

In this sense, the crisis of the Union was a crisis of communication. Northerners were waging war against the South with dangerous words; Southerners were trying to stifle those words with force, and the cross-fire was cutting off conversation, particularly in Congress, an institution grounded on open debate and free speech.

It is one thing to understand the doctrine, and quite another to be masters of the controversy.' Lewis's ambition was of course to know the doctrine and to be master of the controversy.

These tiresome talks and debates, Lifeless chandelier's yellowish daze, And the flicker of elegant plates Near the graceful hand, slightly raised

Here begins Ukraine's great debate – still raw, still undecided: are Ukrainians Central Europeans, like the Poles, or a species of Russian? Poles used to call western Ukraine 'Eastern Little Poland'; the Russian name for Ukraine was 'Little Russia'.

Above all, the old newspapers and broadcasters created the possibility of a single national conversation. In many advanced democracies there is now no common debate, let alone a common narrative. People have always had different opinions. Now they have different facts.

has unnerved that part of the population that prefers unity and homogeneity. Democracy itself has always been loud and raucous, but when its rules are followed, it eventually creates consensus. The modern debate does not. Instead, it inspires in some people the desire to forcibly silence the rest.

Alexander Hamilton and John Adams] wanted to build democracy in America on the basis of rational debate, reason, and compromise. But they had no illusions about human nature: They knew that men could sometimes succumb to "passions," to use their old-fashioned word. They knew that any political system built on logic and rationality was always at risk from an outburst of the irrational.

I hate it when people insist on wrangling with you about something, then try to stop as soon as they see the arguments are no longer going all their way.

Beauty is something that is hard to debate. Every man thinks his ideal the best. But the wittiest woman rise to the top of this structure, conventional beauty often taking a back seat to a woman possessed of a clever tongue.

Beauty is something that is hard to debate. Every man thinks his ideal the best." His eyes raked her hotly, and she felt her internal temperature increase like a kitchen stove overly stocked before being lit. "But the wittiest women rise to the top of this structure, conventional beauty often taking a backseat to a woman possessed of a clever tongue.

Talk is essential, talk stimulates, arguments clarify, speculations which are thrown out to the winds may fall like seed to spring up with a crop of perceptions.

The moment a man uses a woman's sex to discredit her arguments, the thoughtful reader knows that he is unable to answer the arguments themselves.

There's a thin line between talking to yourself and arguing with an idiot.