Rebuttal Quotes

• Every well-thought-out rebuttal to dogma, every scrap of intelligent logic, every absurdist reduction of some bullying stance is the antidote.

  George Sanders

  Bullying, Intelligent, America

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• He is the resounding human rebuttal to all Marxist historians who think history is the story of vast and impersonal economic forces. The point of the Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the difference.

  Boris Johnson

  Thinking, Men, Differences

  Source: www.goodreads.com

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• Rebuttals never alter desire.

  Mason Cooley

  Desire

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• President Obama gave a speech about healthcare tonight, and yesterday he gave a pep talk to students. He told them that in order to succeed they need to work hard and study hard. Then today, former President George W. Bush presented the rebuttal.

  Conan O'Brien

  Hard Work, Order, Yesterday

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• I'm not going to sit around an pretend I'm not thinking things on my blog when I am thinking them and when I'm open to rebuttal.

  Andrew Sullivan

  Thinking, Blogs

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 12, 2010.

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• Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death. And here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of any form of art, art which affirms the value and the holiness of life, the artist must die. To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Art, Self, Holiness

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• As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.

  Sarah Dessen

  Forever, Speechless, Left

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “This Lullaby”, p.114, Penguin

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• Rebut the negative, and the opposing campaign has not merely lost a skirmish, it has suffered almost irreparable damage. An effective rebuttal makes it hard for the campaign whose ad is destroyed to be believed about anything ever again.

  Dick Morris

  Political, Negative, Campaigns

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• Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.

  Jack Vance

  Challenges, Deception, Fleeting

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• Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky

  Anais Nin

  Sky, Rejection, Whole

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• I'm the kind of person who embarks on an endless leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal and rebut the refutation. Endlessly.

  Tom Stoppard

  Issues, Moral, Kind

  Tom Stoppard, Paul Delaney (1994). “Tom Stoppard in Conversation”, p.31, University of Michigan Press

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• We had a national tragedy this week, and the President of the United States and Sarah Palin both made speeches on the same day. Obama came out against lunatics with guns, she gave the rebuttal.

  Bill Maher

  Gun, Tragedy, President

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• Our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy.

  Sam Harris

  Dog, Atheist, Moving

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• Effective self-government cannot succeed unless the people are immersed in a steady, robust, unimpeded, and uncensored flow of opinion and reporting which are continuously subjected to critique, rebuttal, and reexamination.

  William O. Douglas

  Government, Self, People

  "Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 29, 1972.

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• I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation.

  Tom Stoppard

  Writing, Play, Way

  Tom Stoppard, Paul Delaney (1994). “Tom Stoppard in Conversation”, p.31, University of Michigan Press

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• By 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt was so angry at FDR's policies, she writes a book called This Troubled World. And it is actually a point-by-point rebuttal of her husband's foreign policy. We need collective security. We need a World Court. We need something like the League of Nations. We need to work together to fight fascism. We need embargoes against aggressor nations, and we need to name aggressor nations. All of which is a direct contradiction of FDR's policies.

  Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Husband, Book, Writing

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The debate [in Undeniable] was nominally about creationism as a "viable" explanation for what we observe around us. For my side, the debate went very well; I'm not sure what I would change, although I can imagine shortening my answers during the rebuttals, perhaps.

  Bill Nye

  Sides, Answers, Debate

  Source: biologos.org

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• I'd never seen anyone do a rebuttal review to some of the reviews.

  Mark Ruffalo

  Reviews

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Nothing works on the campaign trail like attacks on candidates for bad attendance. It alienates people on both sides of every issue and reflects a callous disregard of the work of the people. The feeble argument that "I'm running for president" isn't much of a rebuttal: George W. Bush finds time to be president, and he's running too.

  Dick Morris

  Running, Issues, People

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• Violence is what people do when they run out of good ideas. It's attractive because it's simple, it's direct, it's almost always available as an option. When you can't think of a good rebuttal for your opponent's argument, you can always punch them in the face.

  James S.A. Corey

  Running, Simple, Thinking

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• [from the television show,"Evade the Question Time"]At the end of the first round, I will award three points to Mr. Kaine for an excellent nonspecific condemnation, plus one bonus point for blaming the previous government and another for successfully mutating the question to promote the party line. Mr. van de Poste gets a point for a firm rebuttal, but only two points for his condemnation, as he tried to inject an impartial and intelligent observation.

  Jasper Fforde

  Party, Intelligent, Awards

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• Most of those men don’t want to sleep with you,” he said in blunt rebuttal. “I reserve the right to introduce my fist to the faces of the ones who do.

  Nalini Singh

  Sleep, Men, Fists

  Nalini Singh (2012). “Angels' Flight: A Guild Hunter Collection”, p.153, Penguin

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• [About a conference on Systematic Biology] Many interesting statements were made that apply directly to the work of taxonomists. In some cases the interest lay in the value of the suggestion and sometimes in the obvious need for rebuttal.

  Richard E. Blackwelder

  Science, Interesting, Systematic

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