Argumentation Quotes

• If thou continuous to take delight in idle argumentation thou mayest be qualified to combat with the sophists, but will never know how to live with men.

  Socrates

  Men, Delight, Opinion

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• I simply cannot accept that there are on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Views, Opposites, Two Sides

  "Fictional character: Edward R. Murrow". "Good Night, and Good Luck", 2005.

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• I think sometimes younger people - not necessarily thinkers and intellectuals and the like, but people who are on social media and who are not as informed as journalists or professional thinkers - may get a bit, you know, impatient with the necessity of sustained thinking, sustained argumentation, sustained dialogue.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Thinking, Media, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.

  Richard Whately

  Art, Mind, Principles

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• I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds.

  Bertrand Russell

  Real, Emotional, Thinking

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.191, Psychology Press

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• As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice--there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Science, Impact, Political Revolution

  Thomas S. Kuhn (2012). “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.94, University of Chicago Press

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• Truth is not a matter of argumentation and conviction; it is not the outcome of opinion.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Truth, Outcomes, Matter

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1956). “Commentaries on Living”, p.127, Penguin Books India

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• Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.

  Clay Shirky

  Wikipedia, Unending, Collectivism

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• When an apologist attempts to be autonomous in his reasoned argumentation he indicates that he considers God to be less certain than his own existence and that he places greater credence in his independent reasoning than in God's Word.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  Independent, Certain, Existence

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• Do not dispute with anyone in any matter as far as possible. For in argumentation lies much harm and its evil is greater than its benefit.

  Al-Ghazali

  Wisdom, Lying, Islamic

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• My generation has not seen one single day of peace, and my dream is for my children and the children of all Colombians to have the change to see it. I hope the guerrilla understands that the time has come to leave this 50-year confrontation behind; that the time has come to change from bullets to votes, from weapons to argumentations; that the time has come for them to continue their struggle, but within democracy.

  Juan Manuel Santos

  Dream, Children, Struggle

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• Argumentation is a human enterprise that is embedded in a larger social and psychological context. This context includes (1) the total psyches of the two persons engaged in dialogue, (2) the relationship between the two persons, (3) the immediate situation in which they find themselves and (4) the larger social, cultural and historical situation surrounding them.

  Peter Kreeft

  Psych, Two, Historical

  Peter Kreeft, Fr. Ronald Tacelli (2016). “Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith”, p.19, Ignatius Press

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• I believe because I am told to believe ... My faith is faith; it is not evolved out of argumentation, nor does it seek the aid of that.

  Christina Rossetti

  Faith, Believe, Doe

  Christina Georgina Rossetti (1970). “The poetical works: With memoir and notes &c”

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• I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Exercise, Light

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Ascent to Truth”, p.213, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This splendid book discusses how, in the last two hundred fifty years, large numbers of people have achieved levels of well-being that were previously available only to a few individuals, and how this achievement has given rise to equally unprecedented inequalities. Unique in its focus and scope, exceptional knowledge and coherence, and careful argumentation, The Great Escape is highly illuminating and a delight to read.

  Thomas Pogge

  Book, Unique, Years

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• Among the numerous requisites that must concur to complete an author, few are of more importance than an early entrance into the living world. The seed of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public. Argumentation may be taught in colleges, and theories formed in retirement; but the artifice of embellishment and the powers of attraction can be gained only by a general converse.

  Samuel Johnson

  Retirement, Writing, College

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.215, Univ of California Press

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• They [human beings] are unwilling to gamble that God made those people who are skilled at rational argumentation uniquely virtuous. They protect themselves and others from cleverness by obscuring their preferences.

  James G. March

  People, Made, Preference

  "How Decisions Happen in Organizations". Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 6, 1991.

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• It is incumbent upon philosophy ... to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.

  Theodor Adorno

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Political

  Theodor W. Adorno (2012). “Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords”, p.10, Columbia University Press

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• Obama's style of argumentation is unlike any president I have ever met, and I've met a lot of them. And the condescension that oozes from him when he's talking about his opponents, it's really striking.

  Paul Gigot

  Talking, Style, President

  "Jeb Bush's Iraq Stumble". "Journal Editorial Report" with Paul Gigot, www.wsj.com. May 17, 2015.

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• In learning and argumentation, the quality brain is similar to a facility of maximum security. What passes the logic test, free of fallacy and pretense, then must pass the test of biblical accuracy in order to proceed as an adopted, reliable truth.

  Criss Jami

  Biblical, Order, Brain

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.34, Criss Jami

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• It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.

  Francis Bacon

  Science, Discovery, New Work

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

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• What counts as rational argumentation is as historically determined and as context-dependent, as what counts as good French.

  Richard Rorty

  Determined, Rational, Good French

  "Richard Rorty. What made him a crucial American philosopher?" by Stephen Metcalf, www.slate.com. June 18, 2007.

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• Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's Ash?arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed.

  Peter Adamson

  Philosophical, Errors, Islam

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• I am caught in a terrific bind of characterologically and rationally needing to think in the most comprehensive terms possible, forming a continuous system of argument with a gradient that runs from concrete to abstract, and unfortunately being caught also in a culture in which hardly anyone seems capable of applying himself to understand such a demanding form of argumentation.

  Kenny Smith

  Running, Philosophy, Thinking

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• [Not parroting.] My old Master used to say, "It is all very good to teach the parrot to say, 'Lord, Lord, Lord' all the time; but let the cat come and take hold of its neck, it forgets all about it" [You may] pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are, [but] unless you realise the soul there is no freedom. Not talking, theorising, argumentation, but realisation. That I call practical religion.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Cat, Talking, Soul

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