Quotes About Argument

How to win a case in court: If the law is on your side, pound on the law; if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts; if neither is on your side, pound on the table.

Dean and Leach represented Fairmount in an hourlong debate against Marion High that was broadcast on local radio. They argued the affirmative side of the proposition, "The election of United States presidents should be by the direct vote of the people.

Lazlo's mom, Ágota, and my dad had a falling out over the kinds of things siblings usually have falling outs over: money and love. My father made money and Aunt Ágota lost money. Then there was disagreement about how their mother, my grandmother, should live. My father thought a retirement home. Ágota wanted to be paid to take care f her. The argument didn't help anyone. In the end, my grandmother died anyway.

Don't bother to argue anything on the Internet. And I mean, ANYTHING.... The most innocuous, innocent, harmless, basic topics will be misconstrued by people trying to deconstruct things down to the sub-atomic level and entirely miss the point.... Seriously. Keep peeling the onion and you get no onion.

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the right.

A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour each other if possible.

Argument, of course, is the whole point of history. Disagreement; my word against yours; this evidence against that. If there were such a thing as absolute truth the debate would lose its lustre. I, for one, would no longer be interested. I well remember the moment at which I discovered that history was not a matter of received opinion.

I know quite well why I became a historian.... It was because dissension was frowned upon when I was a child: 'Don't argue, Claudia,' 'Claudia, you must not answer back like that.' Argument, of course, is the whole point of history. Disagreement; my word against yours; this evidence against that. If there were such a thing as absolute truth the debate would lose its lustre. I, for one, would no longer be interested.

Reason is flawless, de jure, but reasoners are not, de facto.

The root of most atheism i not argument but attitude, not itellection but feeling, not the love of truth but the fear of truth.

Chesterton said once that there is only one unanswerable argument against Christianity: Christians. And

The purpose of arguing is not to win. Arguing is not a game. It's not, I'm cleverer than you are. The purpose of argument is like the purpose of science: to know. It's a means, not the only means, of knowing, of transferring us from ignorance to knowledge, a way of getting out of that cave. Philosophy is, in some obvious ways, not like what we today call science, but in some other less than obvious ways, it's very similar to what we today call science.

It is an a fortiori argument: if even the veneration of a beloved father's relics after he dies is a good thing, how much more the veneration of a saint's?

The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.

The world would be a much simpler place if one could bring about social change merely by making a logically consistent moral argument.

the argument is really about equality rather than about rights.

Since reasoning alone proved incapable of fully resolving the clash between self-interest and ethics, it is unlikely that rational argument will persuade every rational person to act ethically.

The central argument against abortion, put as a formal argument, would go something like this: First premise: It is wrong to kill an innocent human being. Second premise: A human fetus is an innocent human being. Conclusion: Therefore, it is wrong to kill a human fetus. The usual liberal response is to deny the second premise of this argument.

like an old married couple for whom bickering is the default mode.

What's a good lawyer besides a superior bullshitter?...

A popular slogan claims that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The intent is no doubt to suggest that if "people" were deprived of guns, they would find some other means of killing each other—that what matters is the intent, not the type of weapon. What is missing from this argument is that without a gun, the capacity to kill may be greatly diminished. One wag suggested, "Guns don't kill people, they just make it real easy.

DICK: I think philosophically I fit in with some of the very late pre-Socratic people around the time of Zeno and Diogenes—the Cynics, in the Greek sense. I am inevitably persuaded by every argument that is brought to bear.

If you dial', Iran said, eyes open and watching, 'for greater venom, then I'll dial the same. I'll dial the maximum and you'll see a fight that makes every argument we've had up to now seem like nothing. Dial and see; just try me!' She rose swiftly, loped to the console of her own mood organ, stood glaring at him, waiting.