Argument Quotes - Page 7

• You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Dog, People, Mind

  Jonathan Haidt (2012). “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, p.48, Vintage

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• The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Women, Window Panes, Broken

  Quoted in George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (1936)

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• The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right - subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility.

  L. Neil Smith

  Choices, Fundamentals, Weapons

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  I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

  John Brown

  Thinking, Light, People

  John Brown (1910). “The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia”

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• To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.

  Henri Nouwen

  Listening, Needs, Speech

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• I think that in any argument about right or wrong in football, a reference to Don Revie's Leeds United is the nuclear option. There is, quite simply, nowhere to go after that. There has never been a more horrible football team. The Leeds of the Seventies were found guilty, week in, week out, of crimes against humanity.

  Giles Smith

  Soccer, Football, Team

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• I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.

  Plato

  Mean, Walks, Turns

  Plato (2011). “The Final Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo”, p.19, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Most of this film, however, is about interpretation - are these people terrorists or freedom fighters? Are they good or bad? Is cutting timber good or bad? And I don't feel like the answers to those questions are simple, so we don't try to answer them for the audience. I wanted to elicit the strongest - and most heartfelt - arguments from the characters in the film and let those arguments bang up against the strongest arguments of their opponents.

  Marshall Curry

  Character, Cutting, Simple

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• Success and vocabulary go hand in hand. This has been proven so often that it no longer admits of argument.

  Wilfred Funk

  Vocabulary, Hands, Has Beens

  Wilfred Funk (1974). “Words of Power”

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• There can be no argument about the Lone Star State's significant contributions to American history, and we must remember the actions and the sacrifices of those who made Texas independence a reality.

  Michael McCaul

  Stars, Sacrifice, Reality

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• If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse; there is no argument in an epithet.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Giving, Abuse, Logic

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.3823, Library of Alexandria

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• The people of Nebraska are for free silver and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later.

  William Jennings Bryan

  People, Political, Looks

  William Jennings Bryan (1967). “William Jennings Bryan: Selections”, Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill [1967]

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• The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.

  Carroll Quigley

  Party, Years, Ideas

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• The Unconscious Civilisation There is a certain terrifying dignity to the big ideologies. With the stroke of an intellectual argument the planet is put in its place. Only the bravest or the most foolish of individuals would not become passive before such awe inspiring destinies.

  John Ralston Saul

  Destiny, Political, Intellectual

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• Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Winning, Trying, Sucker

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.518, Random House

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• The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Dog, People, Political

  Jonathan Haidt (2012). “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, p.48, Vintage

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• With all the arguments and discussions about the Vietnam War, what did the visual image do? It ended the war.

  Cornell Capa

  War, Vietnam, Discussion

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• I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Opinion, Feels, Persons

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• For the sake of argument and illustration I will presume that certain articles of ordinary diet, however beneficial in youth, are prejudicial in advanced life, like beans to a horse, whose common ordinary food is hay and corn.

  William Banting

  Horse, Illustration, Ordinary

  William Banting (1864). “Letter on Corpulence: Addressed to the Public”, p.17

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• I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.

  Alan Turing

  Moving, Past, Support

  Alan Mathison Turing, B. J. Copeland (2004). “The Essential Turing”, p.450, Oxford University Press

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• If every husband and every wife would constantly do whatever might be possible to ensure the comfort and happiness of his or her companion, there would be very little, if any, divorce. Argument would never be heard. Accusations would never be leveled. Angry explosions would not occur. Rather, love and concern would replace abuse and meanness.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Husband, Divorce, Wife

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• Ivan and Misha is the great American Russian Novel told as Chekhov would tell it, in stories of delicacy, humanity, and insight. From Kiev to Manhattan, Brighton Beach and Bellevue, Michael Alenyikov lays out a series of compelling arguments for brotherhood between brothers, between lovers, between men from an old country. Alenyikov confronts big subjects—illness and madness, sex and love in the age of AIDS, old and new world values, a fallen wall, the metaphysics of survival, the march of generations.

  Carolyn Cooke

  Country, Beach, Brother

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• The primary danger of the television screen lies not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents-the talks, the games, the family activities and the arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place and his character is formed.

  Urie Bronfenbrenner

  Children, Lying, Character

  Urie BRONFENBRENNER (1979). “The Ecology of Human Development”, p.242, Harvard University Press

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• In regard to the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not the least part may be handed on without the Holy Scriptures. Do not be led astray by winning words and clever arguments. Even to me, who tell you these things, do not give ready belief, unless you receive from the Holy Scriptures the proof of the things which I announce. The salvation in which we believe is not proved from clever reasoning, but from the Holy Scriptures.

  Cyril of Jerusalem

  Clever, Believe, Winning

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• No one talks about the real ethics disaster in Washington. It's that many members of Congress will listen to any argument against a bill except for two: that it's not moral or that it's not Constitutional.

  Ron Paul

  Real, Two, Political

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