Quotes About Argument

Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.

they are, as a country, starving? It's yet another paradox, which is, we argue, a kind of treasure map. When you see a paradox, keep digging.

The passive aggressive arguer comes armed with tricky tactics. They cannot take the risk that they might be wrong: their self-esteem is too intertwined with their opinions. It is more important to affirm their rightness, and sense of superiority, than to arrive at the truth.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

It could be - and it has been argued, in my view rather plausibly, though neuroscientists don't like it - that neuroscience for the last couple hundred years has been on the wrong track.

There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.

I argue that for every country to have an independent fuel cycle is the wrong way to go. Because any country which has a complete fuel cycle is a latent nuclear weapons country, in the sense that it is not far from making a nuclear weapon.

I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization.

The situation of the Old Left was the theory of Socialist Realism, etc. It seemed pointless to argue. We stayed carefully away from people who wrote for the New Masses.

What type of 'person' is the for-profit corporation? A spoiled brat - all rights and no responsibilities, a traditional conservative argument would say.

The Brexit campaign was transformed from a fringe eccentricity into a mass movement by a handful of people who decided to make it into an argument about identity.

W]e must not let it enter our minds that there may be no validity in argument. On the contrary we should recognize that we ourselves are still intellectual invalids; but that we must brace ourselves and do our best to become healthy... No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than that of developing a dislike for argument.

When the debate is over, slander becomes the tool of the loser.

My method is to call in support of my statements the evidence of a single witness, the man I am arguing with, and to take his vote alone; the rest of the world are nothing to me; I am not talking to them.

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.

you're not only wrong, you're wrong at the top of your voice

Quod erat demonstrandum

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

Podczas pobytu na dworze carycy Katarzyny II wielki szwajcarski matematyk Leonhard Euler wda? si? w dyskusj? na temat istnienia Boga. Aby pokona? przeciwników, poprosi? o tablic?, na której napisa?: (x + y)^2 = x^2 + 2xy + y^2, a wi?c Bóg istnieje! Nie mog?c zakwestionowa? adekwatno?ci wywodu, którego nie rozumieli, i nie chc?c okaza? swojej niewiedzy, oponenci przyj?li ten argument za rozstrzygaj?cy.

I don't write things to shock people, necessarily, but sometimes, when making an argument… Let me put it this way: Some people go out into a field of wheat and they'll pick something- just one thing that they like. However, other people will drive a thresher through there. Sometimes, if I have a choice, I'll just drive the thresher through.

I don't write things to shock people, necessarily, but sometimes, when making an argument… Let me put it this way: some people go out into a field of wheat and they'll pick something– just one thing that they like. However, other people will drive a thresher through there. Sometimes, if I have a choice, I'll just drive the thresher through. Sometimes I think that's what's called for...

Why should I be concerned about how much forward I've moved in relation to interstellar space? One has to be practical; I am a positivist, my dear sir.' 'An argument worthy of a table leg.

I am an impatient, temperamental reader. Anything long-winded, high-flown or gushing irritates me, so does everything that is vague and indistinct, in fact anything that unnecessarily holds the reader up, whether in a novel, a biography or an intellectual argument.

Ci fu una grande battaglia di idee e alla fine non ci furono né vincitori, né vinti, né idee.