Quotes About Argument

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

I confess I know not what a sceptic can answer to this, nor by what good argument he can plead even for a hearing; for either his reasoning is sophistry, and so deserves contempt; or there is no truth in the human faculties, and then why should we reason?

In every chain of reasoning, the evidence of the last conclusion can be no greater than that of the weakest link of the chain, whatever may be the strength of the rest.

Nature hath given us us a particular emotion, to wit, that of ridicule, which seems intended for this very purpose of putting out of countenance what is absurd, either in opinion or practice. This weapon, when properly applied, cuts with as keen an edge as argument. Nature has furnished us with the first to expose absurdity; as with the last to refute error.

In general, the men of lower intelligence won out. Afraid of their own shortcomings and of the intelligence of their opponents, so that they would not lose out in reasoned argument or be taken by surprise by their quick-witted opponents, they boldly moved into action. Their enemies,on the contrary, contemptuous and confident in their ability to anticipate, thought there was no need to take by action what they could win by their brains.

Republic-tards!

The divorce in my family was really amicable. There were no fireworks. It was all sort of behind the scenes, if you will. None of us kids ever saw any argument.

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve.

He was ready to argue there was no rational way you could justify the death penalty, except to admit it was absolute revenge. If that, he would say, was the foundation of the criminal justice system, then we had a pretty sick system.

Even now she was very patriotic, and like most patriots she felt strongly and thought weakly, and so it was not easy to argue with her.

The Bible is not interested in arguing, because if you state a thesis of belief you have already stated it's opposite; if you say, I believe in God, you have already suggested the possibility of not believing in him. [p.250]

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

If one has to say, in an argument, I am intelligent! I do know things! then one might as well stop arguing.

Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument.

Keep your fat face out of it, fart mouth

Bingwen didn't argue. What good would it do? When adults became defiant in public, no amount of evidence, however irrefutable, would make them change their minds.

Just as [he] had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter....

Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument. Bean hated it.

Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things. That is exactly what things were originally made for.

I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

The hundred nights they'd sat up arguing the pros and cons of self destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall

A lawyer aint a priest. Nor a doctor. Law's more vagrant than sickness or sin. We make our case. We'd be fools to say what a dozen other fools might think of it.

The laws of mathematics supposedly derive from the rules of logic. But there is no argument for the rules of logic that does not presuppose them.

She had a curious, receptive mind, which found much pleasure and amusement in listening to other folk. She was clever in leading folk on to talk. She loved ideas, and was considered very intellectual. What she liked most of all was an argument on religion or philosophy or politics, with some educated man. This she did not often enjoy. So she always had people tell her about themselves, finding her pleasure so.