Quotes About Debate

I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.

THE MEMBERS DEBATED the executive at length three separate times during the Convention: early June, mid-July, and early September.

Once we succumb to the temptations of censoring ideas with which we disagree, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone's freedom is at risk.

I don't believe that in our society that we should have guns.

There is a thin line between convincing people of the merits of a case and suggesting they are moral outcasts if they fail to see it.

There is no dispute between me and Richard Dawkins and there never has been, because he's a journalist, and journalists are people that report what the scientists have found and the arguments I've had have actually been with scientists doing research.

All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright.

After last night's debate, the reputation of Messieurs Lincoln and Douglas is secure.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.

The best way to contradict him is to let him talk

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.

If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

If you cannot answer a man's argument, all it not lost; you can still call him vile names.

If you can not answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

Too much agreement kills the chat.

Too much agreement kills chat.

I now knew a method of speaking and writing that—by means of a refined vocabulary, stately and thoughtful pacing, a determined arrangement of arguments, and a formal orderliness that wasn't supposed to fail—sought to annihilate the interlocutor to the point where he lost the will to object.

I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide.

The trouble with this, in MacIntyre's opinion, was that all the insistence on the primacy of reason and of "rational debate" had ever achieved was to have erased from men's minds what, since Aristotle, had been the main support for their entire moral, intellectual, and political lives: the concept of virtue. And it had given them nothing in return. Their intellectual "light" was, in fact, nothing other than moral darkness.

Listen, if the mayor wants to have a debate about education in this city, I got three words: bring it on.

Is Medicare socialism? You want to get rid of Medicare. And a lot of the people against health care do. I want to preserve it and grow it.

you must use arguments to explain how you arrived at your conclusion. That is how you will convince others: by offering the reasons and evidence that convinced you. It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.