Quotes About Argument

You cannot explain failure any more than you can argue with success.

How can I argue with someone who makes no sense?

She didn't understand people who thrived on argument and being right all the time. Her mother was that way, and what did that get her? Nothing but unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and anger.

The beauty of a Jewish education is that you learn how to argue.

One man who didn't like mob action even on behalf of civil rights was Thurgood Marshall. A skilled lawyer, he was redeeming civil rights for blacks the American way—by bringing lawsuits, making arguments, and winning in court. Marshall was the anti-Rousseau, using words, not pictures, to get justice. Martin

a person bound to the facts can never hope to best the rabble-rouser in the arena.

The best way to undermine extremists' insistence that truth is on their side is to argue that theirs is merely one way of looking at things. The only truth is that there is no correct way to interpret scripture. When you open it up like that, you're effectively saying that there is no right answer. And in the absence of a right answer, pluralism is the only option. And pluralism will lead to secularism, and to democracy, and to human rights.

the fact that unjustified beliefs can have a consoling influence on the human mind is no argument in their favor.

The fact that religious faith has left its mark on every aspect of our civilization is not an argument in its favor, nor can any particular faith be exonerated simply because certain of its adherents made foundational contributions to human culture.

In "A Problem from Hell," I had highlighted the work of Albert Hirschman, the Princeton economist who published the landmark book The Rhetoric of Reaction in 1991. Hirschman's thesis was that those who didn't want to pursue a particular course of action tended to argue that a given policy would be futile ("futility"), that it would likely make matters worse ("perversity"), or that it would imperil some other goal ("jeopardy").

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.

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

APORIA  (APO'RIA) n.s. [a figure in rhetorick, by which the speaker shews, that he doubts where to begin for the multitude of matter, or what to say in some strange and ambiguous thing; and doth, as it were, argue the case with himself. Thus Cicero says, Whether he took them from his fellows more impudently, gave them to a harlot more lasciviously, removed them from the Roman people more wickedly, or altered them more presumptuously, I cannot well declare. Smith's Rhetorick.

ALLEGER  (ALLE'GER)   n.s.[from allege.]He that alleges. Which narrative, if we may believe it as confidently as the famous alleger of it, Pamphilio, appears to do, would seem to argue, that there is, sometimes, no other principle requisite, than what may result from the lucky mixture of the parts of several bodies.Boyle.

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

But against love, the case was solid. Easily argued. And you could, indeed, hold it in your hand.

When I didn't argue he was satisfied he had persuaded me, and was not the first to make that mistake.

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

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.

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.

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.

That's what makes reality reality, the fact that it just keeps being true no matter how much you argue with it.