Argument Quotes - Page 9

• Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence.

  Christine de Pizan

  Heart, Mean, Views

  48 Copy quote

• 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)

  108 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

  Adin Ballou

  Crush, Army, Careers

  Adin Ballou (1848). “Christian non-resistance, in all its important bearings, illustrated and defended”, p.87

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you’re taking the country through difficult times and difficult decisions you’ve got to take the country with you. That means permanently trying to make the argument that what you’re doing is fair and seen to be fair.

  David Cameron

  Country, Mean, Decision

  52 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  147 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  70 Copy quote

• To every argument an equal argument is opposed.

  Sextus Empiricus

  Equal

  Sextus (Empiricus.), Philip Paul Hallie (1985). “Selections from the Major Writings on Scepticism, Man, & God”, p.85, Hackett Publishing

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one's conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.

  George Soros

  Meaning Of Life, Doe, Investing

  George Soros (1994). “The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market”, p.363, John Wiley & Sons

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you're in the Middle of an Argument, ask yourself: Do I want to be Right or be Happy?

  Wayne Dyer

  Happy, Want, Arguing

  5 Copy quote

• Family traditions are more than arguments with the dead, more than collections of family letters you try to decipher. A tradition is also a channel of memory through which fierce and unrequited longings surge, longings that define and shape a whole life.

  Michael Ignatieff

  Memories, Trying, Shapes

  6 Copy quote

• That Francis Bacon retains his reputation gained, is not strange to any that knows him. The unusual words wherewith he had spangled his speech, were rather gracious for their propriety than strange for their novelty, and like to serve both for occasions to report and means to remember his argument. Certain sentences of his , somewhat obscure, and as it were presuming upon their capacities will, I fear, make some of them rather admire than commend him. In sum, all is as well as words can make it, and if it please Her Majesty to add deeds, the Bacon may be too hard for the Cook.

  Edward Coke

  Mean, Deeds, May

  4 Copy quote

• Closing one's ears to the complaints of partisans would also entail closing one's mind to the substance of their arguments.

  Daniel Okrent

  Mind, Substance, Ears

  4 Copy quote

• I don't make a Bible argument in the ad, nor have I made a bible argument in the public space. My argument is simple, which is, that for several thousand years in Western civilization, marriage has been the union of one man and one woman. Research is overwhelming that children need mothers and fathers.

  Gary Bauer

  Mother, Children, Father

  4 Copy quote

• If one is going to change the definition of marriage to be, quote, 'same sex,' then there is absolutely no valid argument constitutionally or rhetorically you can make against multiple people getting married. These are radical social changes.

  Gary Bauer

  Sex, People, Definitions

  4 Copy quote

• Feminist theory has left an indelible mark on my own critical—and creative—thinking . . . For me, everything I questioned about what it meant to be a man – and how much my sexuality would perpetually challenge those meanings—could be found in arguments posed by feminists. What can I say? I identified.

  Todd Haynes

  Men, Thinking, Feminist

  Todd Haynes (2007). “Far From Heaven, Safe, and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story: Three Screenplays”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not propose to criticize the fatuous argument I have just outlined; here, to expound is to expose.

  Peter Medawar

  Criticize, Propose

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.7, Oxford University Press, USA

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.

  Thomas Nagel

  Together, Example, Alternatives

  15 Copy quote

• I now add, farther, that the apostles argument is so far from proving it to be the duty of people to obey, and submit to, such rulers as act in contradiction to the public good, and so to the design of their office, that it proves the direct contrary.

  Jonathan Mayhew

  People, Office, Design

  Jonathan Mayhew (1969). “Sermons: Seven Sermons: A Discourse, Concerning the Unlimited Submission and Non-resistance to the Higher Powers. The Snare Broken”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• One could drive a prairie schooner through any part of his argument and never scrape against a fact.

  David F. Houston

  Facts, Prairie

  9 Copy quote

• Silence is an argument in favor of the status quo. A refusal to address an inequity is a strategy for maintaining that inequity.

  PZ Myers

  Silence, Addresses, Favors

  17 Copy quote