quotations about arguments & arguing
The quiet shaft of ridicule oftimes does more than argument.
WILLIAM SCARBOROUGH
attributed, And I Quote
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
We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own.
JOSEPH JOUBERT
Pensées
And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry V
Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Some Mistakes of Moses
In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Nothing firms up a friendship like a good-natured argument.
LEMONY SNICKET
Who Could That Be at This Hour?
Slow to argue, but quick to act.
BRET HARTE
John Burns of Gettysburg
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.
OSCAR WILDE
The Critic as Artist
Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself, in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance.
SADI
Gulistan
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
In arguing, answer your opponent's earnest with jest and his jest with earnest.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
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
A dispute begun in jest ... is continued by the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into enmity.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, No. 23
Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won't?
L.J. SMITH
Nightfall
There are two sides to every question.
PROTAGORAS
Protagoras
To make the weaker argument the stronger.
PLATO
Apology of Socrates
When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.
C.S. FORESTER
The African Queen
Where we desire to be informed, 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgements below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Bombs to settle arguments, the order of the boot
Can you hear them crying in the rubble of Beirut?
THE SPECIALS
"War Crimes"