Argument Quotes - Page 38

• There's no point in arguing with partisan supporters. Their views are their identity. Nothing you can tell the most phlegmatic follower.

  Michael Lewis

  Art, Views, Identity

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• Obscurity in writing is commonly an argument of darkness in the mind. The greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness.

  John Wilkins

  Writing, Darkness, Style

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• Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one's own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people's, preserve dignity.

  Doug Stanhope

  People, Acquiescence, Dignity

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• I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the Cross, the Cross--God's hammer, God's fire.

  Abbott Eliot Kittredge

  Jesus, Simple, Fire

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• Truth is congenial to man. Moral truth is then most consummate when, like beauty, it commends itself without argument. The righteous not only does right, but loves to do right.

  Francis William Newman

  Truth, Men, Doe

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• [T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Democracy, Sound

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.163, Vintage

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• Give me the facts, and I will twist them the way I want, to suit my argument.

  Winston Churchill

  Giving, Suits, Facts

  To an Oxford historian assisting him during the 1930s on a biography of the first Duke of Marlborough; quoted in Stafford, Churchill and Secret Service (1998).

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• We recognize the force of the argument that the effects of war under modern conditions may be felt in the economy for years and years, and that if the war power can be used in days of peace to treat all the wounds which war inflicts on our society, it may not only swallow up all other powers of Congress but largely obliterate the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments as well.

  William O. Douglas

  War, Power, Years

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• The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a séance.

  Thomas Huxley

  Suicide, Guinea, Made

  Review in the Daily News on October 17, 1871. "Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley". Book edited by Leonard Huxley, Volume 1, p. 452, 1900.

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• The whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed from the inorganic to the organic from blind force to conscious intellect and will.

  Thomas Huxley

  Crush, Men, Views

  "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature". Book by Thomas Henry Huxley. Chapter 1, p. 28, 1884.

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• Particularly when the war power is invoked to do things to the liberties of people, or to their property or economy that only indirectly affect conduct of the war and do not relate to the engagement of the war itself, the constitutional basis should be scrutinized with care. ... I would not be willing to hold that war powers may be indefinitely prolonged merely by keeping legally alive a state of war that had in fact ended. I cannot accept the argument that war powers last as long as the effects and consequences of war for if so they are permanent -- as permanent as the war debts.

  Robert H. Jackson

  War, Power, Long

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• Arguments do not erase prejudice any more than arguments erase scars, whether psychological or physical.

  Gerry Spence

  Prejudice, Scar, Psychological

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• Argument is not always truth.

  Lajos Kossuth

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• Silence is one of the hardest kind of arguments to refute. There is no good substitute for wisdom; but silence is the best that has yet been discovered.

  Josh Billings

  Silence, Kind, Substitutes

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• [F]riends praise your abilities to the skies, submit to you in argument, and seem to have the greatest deference for you; but, though they may ask it, you never find them following your advice upon their own affairs; nor allowing you to manage your own.

  William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

  Sky, Advice, May

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• After a lifetime of picking stocks, I have to admit that Bogle's arguments in favor of the index fund have me thinking of joining him rather than trying to beat him. Bogle's wisdom and common sense are indispensable... for anyone trying to figure out how to invest in this crazy stock market.

  Jim Cramer

  Crazy, Thinking, Common Sense

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• It is our argument that a sufficiently low price can turn a security of mediocre quality into a sound investment opportunity - provided that the buyer is informed and experienced and he practices adequate diversification. For, if the price is low enough to create a substantial margin of safety, the security thereby meets our criterion of investment.

  Benjamin Graham

  Opportunity, Practice, Safety

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• The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.

  Franz Kafka

  Real, Taken, Ego

  Franz Kafka (2013). “Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors”, p.455, Schocken

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• We are pleased with one who instantly assents to our opinions, but we love a proselyte.

  Arthur Helps

  Opinion

  Sir Arthur Helps (1883). “Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd”

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• Always win fools first. They talk much, and what they have once uttered they will stick to; whereas there is always time, up to the last moment, to bring before a wise man arguments that may entirely change his opinion.

  Arthur Helps

  Wise, Winning, Men

  Sir Arthur Helps (1871). “Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms”, p.114

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• He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.

  Richard Whately

  Conviction, Discussion, Qualified

  Richard Whately (1856). “Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley”, p.41

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• If you're part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they're going to kill you, doesn't happen that way. There weren't any arguments or curses like in the movies. See, your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends, the people who've cared for you all of your life. And they always seem to come at a time that you're at your weakest and most in need of their help.

  Henry Hill

  People, Needs, Way

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• A rioter with a Molotov cocktail in his hands is not fighting for civil rights any more than a Klansman with a sheet on his back and mask on his face. They are both more or less what the law declares them: lawbreakers, destroyers of constitutional rights and liberties and ultimately destroyers of a free America.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Friends, Freedom, War

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.898, Best Books on

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• Arguments hardly affect the faithful- their beliefs have an entirely different foundation.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Faithful, Foundation, Different

  Paul Feyerabend (2001). “Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Being”, p.212, University of Chicago Press

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• When one hears the argument that marriage should be indissoluble for the sake of children, one cannot help wondering whether the protagonist is really such a firm friend of childhood.

  Suzanne La Follette

  Children, Childhood, Sake

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