Quotes About Debate

Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.

Merely being offended, or worried, isn't a counter-argument. It isn't a deep reason not to think about something or discover whether or not something is true or useful.

There is undoubtedly an important secular debate to be had about the ethics of the death penalty, but it is just as obvious that we should be drawing upon sources that show a greater understanding of the human mind and modern society than is evident in Saint Paul.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Logic is like the sword--those who appeal to it shall perish by it.

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Una opinión no te la pueden censurar, te la tienen que rebatir. Un intelectual sin sentido crítico no un intelectual. Es un adulador.

Legolas is way cuter than Aragorn, and you know it.

While Israel fought for life, debaters weighed her sins and especially the problem of the Palestinians. In this disorderly century refugees have fled from many countries. In India, in Africa, in Europe, millions of human beings have been put to flight, transported, enslaved, stampeded over the borders, left to starve, but only the case of the Palestinians is held permanently open.

It is so easy for outsiders to say that there are two sides to the question. What a terrible expression! I am beginning to detest

You can't argue with success. Sure you can, Dahl said, when it's based on stupidity.

I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it's as if they can't get past their emotions, and in their rage they become as faith-driven as the beliefs they criticise. I always said they give scientists a bad name. After all, science has to be about asking unthinkable questions, not closing down debate.

Schopenhauer on Hegel: A flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan.

muitas vezes, quem sai vencedor de uma disputa deve sua vitória não tanto à correção de seu julgamento na exposição de sua tese, mas, antes, à astúcia e habilidade com que a defendeu.

People who have good arguments use them. People who do not have good arguments try to win by labeling.

Consider the people who routinely disagree with you. See how confident they look while being dead wrong? That's exactly how you look to them.

If your view of the world is that people use reason for their important decisions, you are setting yourself up for a life of frustration and confusion. You'll find yourself continually debating people and never winning except in your own mind. Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational.

Word-thinking is a term I invented to describe a situation in which people are trying to win an argument by adjusting the definition of words. In these situations there is no appeal to reason. But that's okay, because facts and logic are not persuasive anyway. Word-thinking usually happens when people are bad at logic but don't realize it.

If your view of the world is that people use reason for their important decisions, you are setting yourself up for a life of frustration and confusion. You'll find yourself continually debating people and never winning except in your own mind. Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational. On

Word-thinking is a term I invented to describe a situation in which people are trying to win an argument by adjusting the definition of words. In these situations there is no appeal to reason.

You're wasting your time if you try to make someone see reason when reason is not influencing the decision.

Unfortunately, most people believe that analogies are one of the best ways to persuade. That fact goes far in explaining why it seems that every debate on the Internet ends with a Hitler analogy. The phenomenon is so common it has its own name: Godwin's law. But I doubt many people have changed an opinion just because a stranger on the Internet compared them to Hitler. A direct attack usually just hardens people into their current opinions.