Argument Quotes - Page 36

• Philosophy is this amazing technique we've devised for getting reality to answer us back when we're getting it wrong. Science itself can't make those arguments. You actually have to rely on philosophy, on philosophy of science.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Reality, Technique

  "What Do We Have To Teach Plato?". "Here And Now" with Jeremy Hobson, news.stlpublicradio.org. April 22, 2014.

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• Everybody have equal rights to a life of full flourishing. Philosophy slowly, slowly has given us arguments saying, look, you already committed to your own life flourishing, and you're being inconsistent if you don't expand it. So philosophy often works in trying to show us that there's an inner incoherence in our points of view. We're all committed to one thing when it comes to us and our own kind, but we're not willing to expand it and we're guilty of inconsistency.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Philosophy, Rights, Views

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• You don't want to just do a joke because it works - we can make a lot of jokes work - you want to do a joke because it will hopefully build into an argument.

  Stephen Colbert

  Want, Hopefully, Jokes

  Slate's Working Podcast with David Plotz, October 17, 2014.

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• Contempt is the emotion we feel for an opponent whose arguments are too formidable to refute.

  Ann Coulter

  Opponents, Emotion, Formidable

  "Ann Coulter Defends Controversial Comments About Single Mothers". "The O'Reilly Factor", www.foxnews.com. January 15, 2009.

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• Perhaps the most remarkable thing I found about the Bible was how flexible it is. Here we have a book written 3,000 years ago, with bizarre stories, peculiar laws, erratic deity, and yet we are able - through argument, selective reading, and desire - to find a powerful framework of laws and moral reasoning that have built a very successful society. So this Bible, for all its oddities and flaws, serves us beautifully after all these years.

  David Plotz

  Powerful, Book, Reading

  "Biblically Speaking". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

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• The most agreeable thing in life is worthy accomplishment. It is not possible that the idle tramp is as contented as the farmers along the road who own their own farms, and whose credit is good at the bank in town. When the tramps get together at night, they abuse the farmers, but do not get as much satisfaction out of it as do the farmers who abuse the tramps. The sounder your argument, the more satisfaction you get out of it.

  E. W. Howe

  Night, Things In Life, Accomplishment

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• Mistakes are made on two counts: an argument is either based on error or incorrectly developed.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Mistake, Two, Errors

  Saint Thomas (Aquinas) (1960). “St. Thomas Aquinas: Philosophical Texts”

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• There is a vulgar persuasion, that the ignorance of women, by favoring their subordination, ensures their utility. 'Tis the same argument employed by the ruling few against the subject many in aristocracies; by the rich against the poor in democracies; by the learned professions against the people in all countries.

  Frances Wright

  Country, Ignorance, People

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures as delivered by Frances Wright: with three addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789. Second edition”, p.55

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• Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Play, Poetry, Body

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.193, Harvard University Press

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• Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.

  Plato

  Probability, Idle

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• Never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many on their getting warm, becoming rude and shooting one another.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Military, War, Men

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.279, Cambridge University Press

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• A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Perseverance, Effort, Enemy

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.311, Rowman & Littlefield

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• One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.

  George Santayana

  Ideas, Bye, America

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.8, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.

  George Santayana

  Men, Long, Speech

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

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• I read here and there in books, enjoying the examples and ignoring the argument.

  Mason Cooley

  Book, Reading, Example

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• Let us begin to understand the argument.
  There is a solution to everything: Science.

  Allen Tate

  Truth, Science, Solutions

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.83, Macmillan

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• Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wisdom, Grasshoppers, Chickens

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• In the mighty and almost limitless potential of American industry-the brilliance and rugged determination of its leaders; the skill, energy and patriotism of its workers-there has been welded an almost impregnable defense against the evil designs of any who would threaten the security of the American continent. It is indeed the most forceful and convincing argument yet evolved to restrain the irresponsibility of those who would recklessly bring down upon the good and peace-loving peoples of all the nations of the earth the disaster of total war.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Determination, War, Skills

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• Seems fairly clear that you fix a breed by LIMITING the amount of alien infiltration. You make a race by homogeneity and by avoiding INbreeding.... No argument has ever been sprouted against it. You like it in dogs and horses.

  Ezra Pound

  Dog, Horse, Race

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• No one thinks anything silly is suitable when they are an adolescent. Such an enormous share of their own behavior is silly that they lose all proper perspective on silliness, like a baker who is nauseated by the sight of his own eclairs. This provides another good argument for the emerging theory that the best use of cryogenics is to freeze all human beings when they are between the ages of twelve and nineteen.

  Anna Quindlen

  Silly, Thinking, Sight

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• Why should not the knowledge, the skill, the expertness, the assiduity, and the spirited hazards of trade and commerce, when crowned with success, be entitled to give those flattering distinctions by which mankind are so universally captivated? Such are the specious, but false arguments for a proposition which always will find numerous advocates, in a nation where men are every day starting up from obscurity to wealth. To refute them is needless. The general sense of mankind cries out, with irresistible force, "Un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme.

  James Boswell

  Men, Starting Up, Class

  James Boswell (2008). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.249, Wordsworth Editions

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• The uniqueness of humans has been claimed on many grounds, but most often because of our tool-making, culture, language, reason and morality. We have them, the other animals don't, and -- so the argument goes -- that's that.

  Carl Sagan

  Animal, Culture, Tools

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• It has often been argued that absolute scepticism is self-contradictory; but this is a mistake: and even if it were not so, it would be no argument against the absolute sceptic, inasmuch as he does not admit that no contradictory propositions are true. Indeed, it would be impossible to move such a man, for his scepticism consists in considering every argument and never deciding upon its validity; he would, therefore, act in this way in reference to the arguments brought against him.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Mistake, Moving, Men

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathan Houser, Christian J.W. J. W. Kloesel (1992). “The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)”, p.56, Indiana University Press

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• Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.

  Jane Rule

  Gay, People, Political

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.247, Open Road Media

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• Sir, what does it matter whom I serve, so long as I am right?

  Pierre Corneille

  Truth, Long, Matter

  "Character: Nicomède". "Nicomède" by Pierre Corneille, act I, scene ii, 1651.

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