quotations about arguments & arguing
I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
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Life of Samuel Johnson
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The most important tactic in an argument next to being right is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face.
STEPHEN JAY GOULD
attributed, goodreads
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You may say, I am hot; I say I am not,
Only warm, as the subject on which I am got.
JONATHAN SWIFT
The Famous Speechmaker
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The tree of knowledge blasted by dispute,
Produces saples leaves instead of fruit.
JOHN DENHAM
Progress of Learning
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You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
JOHN MORLEY
On Compromise
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One single positive weighs more,
You know, than negatives a score.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd
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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
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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
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Bombs to settle arguments, the order of the boot
Can you hear them crying in the rubble of Beirut?
THE SPECIALS
"War Crimes"
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Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief.
PETRARCH
To Laura in Life
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In arguing, answer your opponent's earnest with jest and his jest with earnest.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
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Debate destroys despatch.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
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Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won't?
L.J. SMITH
Nightfall
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Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life of Samuel Johnson
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He'd undertake to prove, by force
Of argument, a man's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a Lord may be an owl,
A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice,
And rooks, Committee-men or Trustees.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
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You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACRE
Bad Science
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In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
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Argument, of course, is the whole point of history. Disagreement; my word against yours; this evidence against that. If there were such a thing as absolute truth the debate would lose its lustre. I, for one, would no longer be interested.
PENELOPE LIVELY
Moon Tiger
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This is no time nor fitting place to mar
The mirthful meeting with a wordy war.
LORD BYRON
Lara
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Data levels all arguments.
ANTHONY W. RICHARDSON
Full-Scale
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