Argument Quotes - Page 18

• Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour's at the stake.

  William Shakespeare

  Integrity, Important Hamlet, Quarrels

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 4, sc. 4, l. 53

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• Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought -- by force of circumstances, not argument -- to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.

  Mark Twain

  Fighting, Thinking, Government

  Mark Twain (2010). “What Is Man?”, p.85, BoD – Books on Demand

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• Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension. Dissent (which come from the Latin, dis and sentire) means originally to feel apart from others. People who disagree have an argument, but people who dissent have a quarrel. People may disagree and both may count themselves in the majority. But a person who dissents is by definition in a minority. A liberal society thrives on disagreement but is killed by dissension. Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Cancer, Latin, Mean

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• When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Arguing

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.43

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• Religious contention is the devil's harvest.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Religious, Devil, Harvest

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• Similes prove nothing, but yet greatly lighten and relieve the tedium of argument.

  Robert South

  Tedium, Simile, Prove

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• But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character, that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against small-pox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters, and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.

  George Eliot

  Love, Character, Men

  George Eliot (2016). “George Eliot Collection: Middlemarch, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, and The Mill on the Floss”, p.164, Xist Publishing

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• Many people have written about the economic meaning of globalization; in One World Peter Singer explains its moral meaning. His position is carefully developed, his tone is moderate, but his conclusions are radical and profound. No political theorist or moral philosopher, no public official or political activist, can afford to ignore his arguments.

  Michael Walzer

  Profound, People, Political

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• When heart speaks and heart listens, harmony is produced. When head talks and head listens, argument is produced.

  Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

  Heart, Speak, Harmony

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• In excess altercation, truth is lost.

  Publilius Syrus

  Excess, Truth Is, Lost

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• I don't have any ideas; my coaches have them. I just pass the ideas on and referee the arguments.

  Bear Bryant

  Sports, Winning, Ideas

  Paul Bear Bryant, John Underwood (2007). “Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Alabama's Coach Bryant”, p.249, Triumph Books

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• Well, I have a message for the nameless , gutless whimperers out there. Quit whining. Unlike some other shows, we here at CROSSFIRE actually present both sides of the issue. ... Look, if you want namby-pamby one-sided arguments go to Fox.

  Paul Begala

  Liberal Media, Issues, Looks

  "How Should Sex be Discussed in America's Classrooms?; Should Cameras be Allowed in Blake Trial?". “CNN Crossfire”, www.cnn.com. April 23, 2002.

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• When [Erwin Schrödinger] went to the Solvay conferences in Brussels, he would walk from the station to the hotel where the delegates stayed, carrying all his luggage in a rucksack and looking so like a tramp that it needed a great deal of argument at the reception desk before he could claim a room.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Biographies, Rooms

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• [Flürscheim] was good at unanswerable arguments.

  Christopher Kelk Ingold

  Science, Biographies

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• Every night on my show, The Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, okay? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it "The No Fact Zone.

  Stephen Colbert

  Funny, Night, People

  "Salad days for satire". "Future Tense" with Antony Funnell, www.abc.net.au. February 8, 2015.

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• If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument... The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ideas, Imagination, Religion

  "Why I Am Not a Christian". "The First-cause Argument". Book by Bertrand Russell, 1927.

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• There could be no more powerful argument against mixing religion and government than the success of independent African American churches in placing racial segregation and discrimination on a reluctant nation's social agenda. Would black churches have been able to take the lead in the struggle had they been dependent on funds doled out for 'faith-based initiatives' . . . ?

  Susan Jacoby

  Powerful, Struggle, Independent

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• The whole argument with the anti-suffragists, or even the critical suffragist man, is this: that you can govern human beings without their consent.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Men, Suffragists, Consent

  "Freedom or death". Emmeline Pankhurst's Speech in Hartford, Connecticut, www.theguardian.com. November 13, 1913.

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• The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

  John Major

  War, Men, Regimes

  "John Major dismisses Blair's Iraq war reasoning" by David Batty, www.theguardian.com. January 2, 2010.

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• There is a sort of exotic preposterousness about a lot of elections, the way arguments are made even cruder.

  Chris Patten

  Voting, Exotic, Way

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• There are a lot of good arguments for birth control, but as far as terminating a life that has already come into existence, I haven't found any.

  Kathy Ireland

  Birth Control, Found, Existence

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• Newspapers and their editors have to become as accountable as the rest of us - they are not 'a special case,' and they have only themselves to blame for having lost the argument for 'exceptionalism' - and with it the right to 'self-regulation.

  David Puttnam

  Self, Editors, Special

  "Post-Leveson, the press must become as accountable as the rest of us" by David Puttnam, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2012.

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• The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don't notice they're getting made fun of. So they'll say something back that's not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

  Adam Sandler

  Fun, Character, Boys

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• I don't believe in God because certain reasons and arguments weigh more heavily in my mind than others, not because I have willfully decided to reject my creator, as many religious people seem to think. I could no more simply decide to believe in God than I could decide to like beetroot, just like that.

  Julian Baggini

  Religious, Believe, Thinking

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• The capacity to make free choices is not something we either have entirely or not at all. Rather, choices become freer the more they are the result of our own capacity to reflect on and assess facts and arguments.

  Julian Baggini

  Choices, Facts, Results

  "Choice is rarely black and white" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. August 02, 2010.

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