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Quotes about debate

72 quotes from 61 people

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One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.
Woodrow Wilson1856–1924Speech on Military Preparedness, Pittsburgh (29 January 1916)
- Wisdom
Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.
Gertrude Stein1874–1946“Form and Intelligibility,” from The Radcliffe Manuscripts (1949); written in 1895 as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College
Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.
Robert G. Ingersoll1833–1899The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
- Religion
Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.
George Santayana1863–1952The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, Ch. VI
- Religion
I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.
Agatha Christie1890–1976The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928), Hercule Poirot
Analogies prove nothing, that is quite true, but they can make one feel more at home.
Sigmund Freud1856–1939“New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis” (1933)
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
Douglas Adams1952–2001The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.
Pericles494–429 BCFuneral Oration, in Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.40 (tr. Richard Crawley)
Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963Address to ANPA
Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords.
Adlai Stevenson II1900–1965Speech in New York City (28 August 1952)
- Democracy
Congratulations, Dave, you’ve just constructed a straw man so large you could burn it in the desert and hold an annoying festival around it.
John Oliverborn 1977Last Week Tonight—Immigration, Stephen Hawking & Football (ff. 0:16:15) (15 June 2014)
- Clever Jabs
Don’t start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don’t. They’ll make you look like chopped liver.
Harlan Ellison1934–2018IguanaCon Guest of Honor speech, Phoenix, Arizona, (1978)
- Advice
Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720), on proving Christianity to unbelievers
- Thinking
The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong.
Karl Popper1902–1994On Freedom (1958)
- Wisdom
All Politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Mens Understandings.
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury1671–1713Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), Vol. 1, pp. 39-40; “Sensus Communis”.
- Liberty