Argument Quotes - Page 21

• Those who say that the West and Islam are eternally irreconcilable have more in common with the Islam extremists than they might like to think, for it's the very same argument of course advanced by Al-Qaida. And they do have it wrong. We need to work with mainstream Islam.

  Pauline Neville-Jones, Baroness Neville-Jones

  Thinking, Islam, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• I tend to believe, when you're in a relationship, if you don't fight, it's not a real relationship. You have to have arguments and tensions, otherwise I don't believe it.

  Richard LaGravenese

  Real, Believe, Fighting

  "Director Richard LaGravenese Talks BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, Adapting the Book, Deleted Scenes, BEHIND THE CANDELABRA, and THE LAST FIVE YEARS". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. February 16, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science is based on the possibility of objectivity, on the possibility of different people checking out for themselves the observations made by others. Without that possibility, there is no empirical principle capable of deciding between different arguments and theories.

  Jose Padilha

  Objectivity, People, Principles

  4 Copy quote

• ... it is because one can build a compelling set of arguments - informed by science and thoroughly compatible with it - that to believe in anything despite the complete lack of evidence is, in fact, irrational.

  Massimo Pigliucci

  Believe, Religion, Atheism

  4 Copy quote

• The Old Testament contains in many places, but especially in the book of Job, one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man. The argument gets at the heart of what the loss of nature will mean to us....God seems to be insisting that we are not the center of the universe, that he is quite happy if it rains where there are no people - that God is quite happy with places where there are no people, a radical departure from our most ingrained notions.

  Bill McKibben

  Jobs, Rain, Book

  4 Copy quote

• LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used ... as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way. An interesting fact in the chemistry of international controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is precipitated in great quantities.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Science, Blue, Two

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2446, Delphi Classics

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Anticipation, Anticipate, Knows

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.32, Harvard University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.

  Samuel Johnson

  Influence, Failing, Purity

  Samuel Johnson (1784). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes..”, p.194

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you look back at history or you look at any place in the world where religious groups or ethnic groups or racial groups or political groups are killing each other, or families have been feuding for years and years, you can see - because you're not particularly invested in that particular argument - that there will never be peace until somebody softens what is rigid in their heart.

  Pema Chodron

  Religious, Peace, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• I don't accept at all the quite popular argument that the press is responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. The monarchy's responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. To blame the press is the old thing of blaming the messenger for the message.

  Anthony Holden

  Old Things, Messengers, Messages

  8 Copy quote

• I suspect we have internal senses. The mind's eye since Shakespeare's time has been proverbial; and we have also a mind's ear. To say nothing of dreams, one certainly can listen to one's own thoughts, and hear them, or believe that one hears them: the strongest argument adducible in favour of our hearing any thing.

  Augustus William Hare

  Dream, Believe, Eye

  7 Copy quote

• Of course, there were huge disagreements in the arguments of military intervention, .. There is no point at the moment on focusing on those disagreements.

  Chris Patten

  Military, Moments, Intervention

  5 Copy quote

• We may not understand how the spirit works; but the effect of the spirit on the lives of men is there for all to see; and the only unanswerable argument for Christianity is a Christian life. No man can disregard a religion and a faith and a power which is able to make bad men good. . .

  William Barclay

  Christian, Men, May

  8 Copy quote

• To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting.

  Philip Guston

  Painting, Begin Again, Familiar

  Philip Guston, Clark Coolidge (2011). “Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations”, p.53, Univ of California Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I always get into arguments with people who want to retain the old values in painting - the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there... What you see is what you see.

  Frank Stella

  People, Want, Facts

  "Questions to Stella and Judd". Interview with Bruce Glaser, www.artnews.com. September 1966.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• In presenting a mathematical argument the great thing is to give the educated reader the chance to catch on at once to the momentary point and take details for granted: two trivialities omitted can add up to an impasse). The unpractised writer, even after the dawn of a conscience, gives him no such chance; before he can spot the point he has to tease his way through a maze of symbols of which not the tiniest suffix can be skipped.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Two, Giving, Add

  13 Copy quote

• I am a believer in liberty . That is my religion to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right because it is his right but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Giving, Freedom Of Speech, Liberty

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1902). “Miscellany”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...[sacred] doctrine is especially based upon arguments from authority, inasmuch as its principles are obtained by revelation: thus we ought to believe on the authority of those to whom the revelation has been made. Nor does this take away from the dignity of this doctrine, for although the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest, yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Christian, Believe, Doe

  Saint Thomas Aquinas, Catholic Way Publishing (2014). “The Summa Theologica: Complete Edition”, p.68, Catholic Way Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sam Harris fearlessly describes a moral and intellectual emergency precipitated by religious fantasies--misguided beliefs that create suffering, that rationalize violence, that have endangered our nation and our future. His argument for the morality, the honesty, and the humility of atheism is galvanizing. It is a relief that someone has spoken so frankly, with such passion yet such rationality. Now when the subject arises, as it inevitably does, I can simply say: Read Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation.

  Janna Levin

  Christian, Religious, Honesty

  7 Copy quote

• The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That's like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight.

  Jerry Falwell

  Pregnancy, Offering, People

  13 Copy quote

• While much of modern behavioral and social science treats individuals as autonomous agents, it is absolutely clear that the way we think and act is enormously influenced by the culture in which we live. It also is clear that the major elements of modern culture-science, technology, law, music, and religion-have evolved over time in a quite concrete sense of the term. Mesoudi makes these arguments very well and his book is a very good read.

  Richard R. Nelson

  Book, Thinking, Technology

  5 Copy quote

• Anne Pitkin's poems have such lyrical sweep, such a sensitive eye for the natural world as it touches the human, that reading Winter Arguments is like seeing a landscape or, better, a richly realized painting of a landscape dotted with figures. But that would leave out their music, which would be a loss. This is a wise and graceful book by a well-traveled woman who knows how to confront deep feeling and frame it to make it all the more intense.

  Rosellen Brown

  Wise, Book, Reading

  6 Copy quote

• Generally, the arguments for same-sex marriage go along these lines: 'I have a civil right.' What the homosexual movement wants to do is to hitch their agenda to the civil rights movement, but I point out that this is illegitimate for a number of reasons. Number one, no black person has ever left his black-ness or changed his black-ness, but plenty of people have come out of the homosexual movement. What we need to do is distinguish between race and behavior.

  Erwin W. Lutzer

  Sex, Numbers, Rights

  Source: www1.cbn.com

  71 Copy quote

  Show source

• Part of the skill of saying no is to shut up afterward and not babble on, offering material for an argument.

  Judith Martin

  Women, Skills, Offering

  7 Copy quote

• Argument weak; speak loudly!

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Law, Speak, Weak

  4 Copy quote