Selected argument quotes

1. A good life is a main argument.

2. In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

3. Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

4. When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.

5. It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

6. The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

7. No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

8. For the sake of argument I'll ignore all your fighting words.

9. No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture; but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics; it grows less and less so.

10. A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

11. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

12. Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.

13. There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

14. Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

15. Great contest follows, and much learned dust Involves the combatants; each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both.

16. It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.

17. Don't argue about the difficulties. The difficulties will argue for themselves.

18. Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument.

19. We should not be surprised that we find meaningless noises in the foundation of many old 'philosophies', and that from them arise most of the old 'philosophical' fights and arguments.

20. What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

21. What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

22. There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, 'What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.'

23. Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.

24. The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

25. I don't know very much but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it:My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

26. Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.

27. A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.

28. You can prove anything by mentioning another computer language. :-)

29. Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

30. 'Logic is invincible because in order to combat logic it is necessary to use logic.'

31. There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

32. Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

33. Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

34. I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

35. It doesn't matter what you think/who you are/what your name is!

36. After it hath been seen how the obstinate and the ignorant of evil disposition are accustomed to dispute, it will further be shewn how disputes are wont to conclude; although others are so wary that without losing their composure, but with a sneer, a smile, a certain discreet malice, that which they have not succeeded in proving by argument - nor indeed can it be understood by themselves - nevertheless by these tricks of courteous disdain they pretend to have proven, endeavouring not only to conceal their own patently obvious ignorance but to cast it on to the back of their adversary. For they dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.

37. If thou continuest to take delight in idle argumentation, thou mayest be qualified to combat with the sophists, but never know how to love with men.

38. Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are shewing you the grounds of it.

39. The object of Parliament is to substitute argument for fisticuffs. (attributed to a House of Commons speech of 1951)

40. My most recent faith struggle is not onw of intellect. I don't really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and some other guys who can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it's about who is smarter, and honestly, I don't care.

41. Personally, I care nothing about names. It makes no difference to me what the supposed great men of the past have said, except as what they have said contains an argument; and that argument is worth to me the force it naturally has upon my mind. Christians forget that in the realm of reason there are no serfs and no monarchs.

42. The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we're not actually fighting it properly. We're not actually standing up to these people and saying, 'It's not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn't justified.'

43. In a word, CLEANTHES, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him. You justly give signs of horror, DEMEA, at these strange suppositions; but these, and a thousand more of the same kind, are CLEANTHES's suppositions, not mine. From the moment the attributes of the Deity are supposed finite, all these have place. And I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at all.

44. Whoever attacks a custom or a creed, will be confronted with a list of the names of the dead who upheld the custom, or believed the creed. He is asked in a very triumphant and sneering way, if he knows more than all the great and honored of the past. Every defender of a creed has graven upon his memory the names of all 'great' men whose actions or words can be tortured into evidence for his doctrine