Quotes About Rebutting

I have devoted a whole book (Unweaving the Rainbow) to ultimate meaning, to the poetry of science, and to rebutting, specifically and at length, the charge of nihilistic negativity, so I shall restrain myself here.

What I always tell people about Trump, or Kellyanne Conway, or Sarah Sanders, is that when you are interviewing these people, it is really more about the interviewer than the interviewee. What I mean by that is that the interviewer has to be ready to interrupt, fact-check, challenge, rebut.

There may be no perfect frame waiting to be found, but, argues the cognitive linguist George Lakoff, it is absolutely essential to have a compelling alternative frame if the old one is ever to be debunked. Simply rebutting the dominant frame will, ironically, only serve to reinforce it. And without an alternative to offer, there is little chance of entering, let alone winning, the battle of ideas.