Argument Quotes IV

ARGUMENT QUOTES IV

quotations about arguments & arguing

In arguing, answer your opponent's earnest with jest and his jest with earnest.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric

Source

Last night we had an argument
Oh, oh, yes we did
Although baby, the things I said
I never meant

SMOKEY ROBINSON

"We've Come Too Far to End It Now"

Source

All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much as the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

On Certainty

Source

Never maintain an argument with heat and clamour, though you think or know yourself to be in the right.

LORD CHESTERFIELD

letter, October 16, 1747

Source

I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

speech to the House of Commons

Source

Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won't?

L.J. SMITH

Nightfall

Source

I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

Life of Samuel Johnson

Source

This is no time nor fitting place to mar
The mirthful meeting with a wordy war.

LORD BYRON

Lara

Source

Testimony is like the shot of a long-bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-bow, equally forcible whether discharged by a giant or a dwarf.

ROBERT BOYLE

attributed, A Treatise on Facts as Subjects of Inquiry by a Jury

Source

But yet beware of councils when too full;
Number makes long disputes.

JOHN DENHAM

Of Prudence

Source

When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.

C.S. FORESTER

The African Queen

Source

There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.

HANNAH ARENDT

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source

In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose.

THOMAS BROWNE

Religio Medici

Source

Slow to argue, but quick to act.

BRET HARTE

John Burns of Gettysburg

Source

Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be--or to be indistinguishable from--self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.

NEAL STEPHENSON

Cryptonomicon

Source

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Works

Source

We should not investigate facts by the light of arguments, but arguments by the light of facts.

MYSON

attributed, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Source

There are two sides to every question.