Debate Quotes - Page 14

• You look at that Democratic debate. I had to laugh at what I saw Barack Obama do. I mean, in one week, he went from saying he is going to sit down for tea with our enemies, but then he's going to bomb our allies. I mean, he's gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week.

  Mitt Romney

  Mean, Laughing, Tea

  "The Tucker Show", www.nbcnews.com. August 7, 2007.

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• In the great debates of early-nineteenth century geology, catastrophists followed the stereotypical method of objective science-empirical literalism. They believed what they saw, interpolated nothing, and read the record of the rocks directly.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Rocks, Records

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.105, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Science, Ideas, Apples

  "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Evolution as Fact and Theory", pp. 254 - 55, 1983.

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• In-depth studies have an influence on general ideas, whereas theories, in turn, in order to maintain themselves, push their spectators to search for new evidence. The mind's activity that is maintained by the debates about these works, is probably the source of the greatest joys given to man to experience on Earth.

  Louis Agassiz

  Science, Men, Order

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• [Science doesn't deal with facts; indeed] fact is an emotion-loaded word for which there is little place in scientific debate.

  Hermann Bondi

  Science, Littles, Facts

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• The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rime or to Great Britain; Boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero, or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament.

  Noah Webster

  Education, Boys, Political

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• ...the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

  Robert Kennedy

  Marriage, Country, Children

  Robert F. Kennedy, Edwin O. Guthman (1993). “RFK: collected speeches”, Viking Pr

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• That's one of the major lessons: no president should ever take this nation to war without full public debate in the Congress and/or in the public.

  Robert McNamara

  War, Patriotic, President

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• I have a reputation for giving unpopular answers at Democratic debates. I never used marijuana. Sorry!

  Joe Lieberman

  Sorry, Marijuana, Giving

  "The Nation; Explaining Why They Didn't Inhale" by Steven A. Holmes, www.nytimes.com. November 9, 2003.

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• This is something that I'm sure I'd have serious debates with my fellow Christians about. I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and prostelytize. There's the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven't embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they're going to hell.

  Barack Obama

  Christian, Jesus, Thinking

  "Obama on faith". The Patheos Interview, www.patheos.com. March 27, 2004.

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• The gospel is a declaration, not a debate.

  James Stuart Stewart

  Christianity, Declaration

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• Men make their own fates - it's personal, not a matter for debate.

  Janet Morris

  Fate, Destiny, Men

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• Reproductive freedom means economic freedom. And that's what this debate is about.

  Diana DeGette

  Badass, Mean, Economic

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• The evidence at present available points strongly to the conclusion that the spirals are individual galaxies, or island universes, comparable with our own galaxy in dimension and in number of component units. [Stating his conviction on the nature of nebulae during the Shapley-Curtis debate on 26 Apr 1920 to the National Academy of Sciences.]

  Heber Doust Curtis

  Numbers, Islands, Dimensions

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• Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage.

  Walter E. Williams

  Believe, Thinking, Government

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• I welcome opposing viewpoints, but I should warn you that you'll be facing off against the 2nd-place finisher at the 1981 Charleston County High-School Debate Tournament. And whatever became of that county champ who argued in favor of tractor safety modifications? Last time I checked, she didn't have her own show.

  Stephen Colbert

  School, Safety, Criticism

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• Never do I argue with a man with a desire to hear him say what is wrong, or to expose him and win victory over him. Whenever I face an opponent in debate I silently pray - O Lord, help him so that truth may flow from his heart and on his tongue, and so that if truth is on my side, he may follow me; and if truth be on his side, I may follow him.

  Al-Shafi‘i

  God, Wisdom, Prayer

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• I want to see us to explore outer space. But I want to do it safely, without the loss of human life, and democratically: where is the free-wheeling debate on this question? Only one force can stop this mission: the will of the American people. They have not been asked. Do they want to endanger their loved ones, their industry with this launch? One force is more powerful than plutonium, the spirit of the American people united.

  Michio Kaku

  Powerful, Loss, Space

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• ...the debate among the scientists if over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who've looked at the science...Well, I guess in some quarters, there's still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.

  Al Gore

  Science, Moon, People

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• Despite the international scientific community's consensus on climate change, a small number of critics continue to deny that climate change exists or that humans are causing it. Widely known as climate change "skeptics" or "deniers," these individuals are generally not climate scientists and do not debate the science with the climate scientists.

  David Suzuki

  Science, Small Numbers, Community

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• The true opponent in a debate on emptiness is your own ego.

  Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

  Inspirational Life, Ego, Opponents

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• Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Errors, Politics, Weapons

  "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" (1779)

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• Our philosophy is we call it as we see it. Sometimes you agree, sometimes you don't. Robust debate is good.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Business, Philosophy, Believe

  "Letterman Denounces Iraq War, Sheehan Critics". www.newsbusters.org. January 3, 2006.

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• No matter what the cause, even though it be to conquer with tanks and planes and modern artillery some defenseless black population, there will be no lack of poets and preachers and essayists and philosophers to invent the necessary reasons and gild the infamy with righteousness. To this righteousness there is, of course, never an adequate reply. Thus a war to end poverty becomes an unanswerable enterprise. For who can decently be for poverty? To even debate whether the war will end poverty becomes an exhibition of ugly pragmatism and the sign of an ignoble mind.

  John T. Flynn

  War, Black, Mind

  John Thomas Flynn (1944). “As We Go Marching”, p.122, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter.

  Wangari Maathai

  Loss, Effort, Environmental

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