quotations about arguments & arguing
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
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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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I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life of Samuel Johnson
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You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
JOHN MORLEY
On Compromise
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Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes
Error a fault and truth discourtesy....
Calmness is a great advantage: he that lets
Another chafe, may warm him at his fire.
GEORGE HERBERT
The Church-Porch
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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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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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In arguing, answer your opponent's earnest with jest and his jest with earnest.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
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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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Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief.
PETRARCH
To Laura in Life
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Debate destroys despatch.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
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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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This is no time nor fitting place to mar
The mirthful meeting with a wordy war.
LORD BYRON
Lara
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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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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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Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won't?
L.J. SMITH
Nightfall
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Data levels all arguments.
ANTHONY W. RICHARDSON
Full-Scale
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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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One single positive weighs more,
You know, than negatives a score.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd
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