Argument Quotes - Page 9

• Ivan and Misha is the great American Russian Novel told as Chekhov would tell it, in stories of delicacy, humanity, and insight. From Kiev to Manhattan, Brighton Beach and Bellevue, Michael Alenyikov lays out a series of compelling arguments for brotherhood between brothers, between lovers, between men from an old country. Alenyikov confronts big subjects—illness and madness, sex and love in the age of AIDS, old and new world values, a fallen wall, the metaphysics of survival, the march of generations.

  Carolyn Cooke

  Country, Beach, Brother

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• The primary danger of the television screen lies not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents-the talks, the games, the family activities and the arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place and his character is formed.

  Urie Bronfenbrenner

  Children, Lying, Character

  Urie BRONFENBRENNER (1979). “The Ecology of Human Development”, p.242, Harvard University Press

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  I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

  John Brown

  Thinking, Light, People

  John Brown (1910). “The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia”

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• In regard to the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not the least part may be handed on without the Holy Scriptures. Do not be led astray by winning words and clever arguments. Even to me, who tell you these things, do not give ready belief, unless you receive from the Holy Scriptures the proof of the things which I announce. The salvation in which we believe is not proved from clever reasoning, but from the Holy Scriptures.

  Cyril of Jerusalem

  Clever, Believe, Winning

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• No one talks about the real ethics disaster in Washington. It's that many members of Congress will listen to any argument against a bill except for two: that it's not moral or that it's not Constitutional.

  Ron Paul

  Real, Two, Political

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• To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.

  Henri Nouwen

  Listening, Needs, Speech

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• To every argument an equal argument is opposed.

  Sextus Empiricus

  Equal

  Sextus (Empiricus.), Philip Paul Hallie (1985). “Selections from the Major Writings on Scepticism, Man, & God”, p.85, Hackett Publishing

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• 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

  Peter L. Berger

  Mistake, Thinking, Hands

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• The scientific argument advanced for intelligent design at the Dover trial, those arguments collapsed, scientifically and intellectually

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Intelligent, Design, Dover

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• The argument for intelligent design basically depends on saying, 'You haven't answered every question with evolution,'... Well, guess what? Science can't answer every question

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Intelligent, Design, Answers

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• If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one's conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.

  George Soros

  Meaning Of Life, Doe, Investing

  George Soros (1994). “The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market”, p.363, John Wiley & Sons

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• When you're in the Middle of an Argument, ask yourself: Do I want to be Right or be Happy?

  Wayne Dyer

  Happy, Want, Arguing

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• Family traditions are more than arguments with the dead, more than collections of family letters you try to decipher. A tradition is also a channel of memory through which fierce and unrequited longings surge, longings that define and shape a whole life.

  Michael Ignatieff

  Memories, Trying, Shapes

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• An ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Algebra

  "Obituary". "Nature", Volume 260, April 17, 1965.

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• That Francis Bacon retains his reputation gained, is not strange to any that knows him. The unusual words wherewith he had spangled his speech, were rather gracious for their propriety than strange for their novelty, and like to serve both for occasions to report and means to remember his argument. Certain sentences of his , somewhat obscure, and as it were presuming upon their capacities will, I fear, make some of them rather admire than commend him. In sum, all is as well as words can make it, and if it please Her Majesty to add deeds, the Bacon may be too hard for the Cook.

  Edward Coke

  Mean, Deeds, May

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• Closing one's ears to the complaints of partisans would also entail closing one's mind to the substance of their arguments.

  Daniel Okrent

  Mind, Substance, Ears

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• I believe that President Clinton considered the legal merits of the arguments for the pardon as he understood them, and he rendered his judgment, wise or unwise, on the merits.

  John Podesta

  Wise, Believe, President

  "Democratic fund-raiser takes Fifth Amendment in pardons probe" by March 1, 2001, www.cnn.com. March 1, 2001.

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• I don't make a Bible argument in the ad, nor have I made a bible argument in the public space. My argument is simple, which is, that for several thousand years in Western civilization, marriage has been the union of one man and one woman. Research is overwhelming that children need mothers and fathers.

  Gary Bauer

  Mother, Children, Father

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• If one is going to change the definition of marriage to be, quote, 'same sex,' then there is absolutely no valid argument constitutionally or rhetorically you can make against multiple people getting married. These are radical social changes.

  Gary Bauer

  Sex, People, Definitions

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• The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Essence, Civilization, Culture

  Samuel P. Huntington (1997). “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, p.58, Penguin Books India

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• I cannot understand antiabortion arguments that center on the sanctity of life. As a species, we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain, and lifelong, grinding poverty show us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we’ve made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred.

  Caitlin Moran

  Pain, War, Believe

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• Feminist theory has left an indelible mark on my own critical—and creative—thinking . . . For me, everything I questioned about what it meant to be a man – and how much my sexuality would perpetually challenge those meanings—could be found in arguments posed by feminists. What can I say? I identified.

  Todd Haynes

  Men, Thinking, Feminist

  Todd Haynes (2007). “Far From Heaven, Safe, and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story: Three Screenplays”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I do not propose to criticize the fatuous argument I have just outlined; here, to expound is to expose.

  Peter Medawar

  Criticize, Propose

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.7, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I have no influence with the rising generation. All my arguments have failed to induce them to set bounds to their wants.

  Benjamin Banneker

  Generations, Rising, Want

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• It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.

  Thomas Nagel

  Together, Example, Alternatives

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