Debate Quotes - Page 22

• Modernist discourse [...] incorporates semantic devices - such as the labeling of theism as 'religion' and naturalism as 'science' - that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Fundamentals, Assumption, Theism

  Phillip E. Johnson (1998). “Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education”, p.45, InterVarsity Press

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• The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

  Anatole Broyard

  Self, Yes And No, Life Is

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• A good argument diluted to avoid criticism is not nearly as good as the undiluted argument, because we best arrive at truth through a process of honest and vigorous debate. Arguments should not sneak around in disguise, as if dissent were somehow sinister... For it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.

  Clarence Thomas

  Courage, Truth, Justice

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• Nowledge which... transcends the bounds, the prejudices and prejudgements of any one society and culture is not an illusion but, on the contrary, a glorious and luminous reality. Just how it was achieved remains subject to debate.

  Ernest Gellner

  Reality, Prejudice, Culture

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• If you have laws and legislation that ban certain things based on the principles of the Scriptures and based on your Christian background, then let it stand there. Who is having big debates with the Islamic people about it (gay rights)? Who is telling them to bend their laws? If your laws are based on your Christian points of view, then you must stand your ground?

  Bishop Noel Jones

  Christian, Islamic, Gay

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• Democrats are making it clear that they intend to use our economic crisis to rush through their longtime liberal goals without public scrutiny or debate. ... This will increase burdens on taxpayers and take a significant step toward socialized medicine.

  Jim DeMint

  Medicine, Goal, Use

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• We have arrived at socialized medicine in America. I do not report this as either a good or bad event but simply as something that has happened with hardly anyone realizing it. This is the first result - and probably the most important - of the national health care debate launched last week by President Clinton. Our politics and economy will never again be the same.

  Robert J. Samuelson

  Medicine, America, Important

  "REPORT: Limbaugh conservatives continue 75-year-old "socialized medicine" smear". www.mediamatters.org. March 5, 2009.

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• "Did God have a mother?" Children, when told that God made the heavens and the earth, innocently ask whether God had a mother. This deceptively simple question has stumped the elders of the church and embarrassed the finest theologians, precipitating some of the thorniest theological debates over the centuries. All the great religions have elaborate mythologies surrounding the divine act of Creation, but none of them adequately confronts the logical paradoxes inherent in the question that even children ask.

  Michio Kaku

  Mother, Children, Simple

  Michio Kaku (1995). “Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension”, p.191, OUP Oxford

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• The term "rational" and its variants (rationality, rationalism) are used in a lot of contexts in economic debate, both positively and negatively, but nearly always sloppily or dishonestly. A specimen I've seen on more occasions than I can count is the line (usually presented with a sense of witty originality) "if you are opposed to economic rationalism, you must be in favor of economic irrationalism"... I've come to the conclusion that the word "rational" has no meaning that cannot better be conveyed by some alternative term and that the best advice is probably to avoid it altogether.

  John Quiggin

  Witty, Advice, Alternatives

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• We won't dispassionately investigate or rationally debate which drugs do what damage and whether or how much of that damage is the result of criminalization. We'd rather work ourselves into a screaming fit of puritanism and then go home and take a pill.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Home, Drug, Pills

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.119, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The land is ours. I will do everything in my power, forever, to fight against a Palestinian state being founded in the Land of Israel.

  Naftali Bennett

  Fighting, Israel, Land

  "The Party Faithful". Interview with David Remnick, www.newyorker.com. January 21, 2013.

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• Something fundamental changes when people begin to ask questions together. The questions create more of a learning conversation than the normal stale debate about problems.

  Michael E. Szymanczyk

  Learning, Knowledge, People

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• History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn’t quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak.

  Jill Lepore

  Art, Writing, Past

  Jill Lepore (2012). “The Story of America: Essays on Origins”, p.15, Princeton University Press

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• I don't ever remember being able to debate with my parents. Even though I thought of myself as a very bright kid, I couldn't be vocal in that way.

  Mindy Kaling

  Kids, Parent, Able

  Interview with Kathryn Borel, www.believermag.com.

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• So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat
  Over everything debatable and combatable
  Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life
  Particularly if he has income and she is pattable.

  Ogden Nash

  Husband, Believe, Wife

  Ogden Nash, “I Do, I Will, I Have”

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• Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries-Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.

  Jonathan Swift

  Dog, Horse, Lying

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• In an echo of earlier times, the climate change prophets have in recent years tried to silence counter views and suppress dissent. August members of the Royal Society, a body once noted for its cultivation of debate in science, are now leaders of the 'science is settled' camp: the only debate they consider to be legitimate is about choice among the different forms of the centralized action they believe is required to deal with the problems they foresee.

  Colin Robinson

  Believe, Echoes, Views

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• Whoever in debate quotes authority uses not intellect, but memory.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Memories, Self Improvement, Use

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• Trees are right at the heart of all the necessary debates: ecological, social, economic, political, moral, religious.

  Colin Tudge

  Religious, Heart, Tree

  Colin Tudge (2006). “The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter”, p.368, Broadway Books

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• It reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s. There were people, in this Congress, in the British Parliament saying, 'Don't worry! Hitler's not real! It'll disappear'.

  Bernie Sanders

  Country, Real, People

  "Matthews: GOP Worried About Obama Standing Over Them 'Like God'". www.newsbusters.org. February 25, 2010.

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• The idea of a liberal media bias is simply a myth. If only it were true, we might have a more humane, open-minded, and ultimately effective public debate on the issues facing the country.

  Barbra Streisand

  Country, Media, Ideas

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• The most startling aspect of the nutrition situation in India is that it is not much of an issue in public debates and electoral politics.

  Jean Dreze

  Issues, India, Nutrition

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• If you try to assert wisdom before people have themselves walked it, be prepared for much resistance, denial, push-back, and verbal debate.

  Richard Rohr

  People, Trying, Denial

  Richard Rohr (2011). “AARP Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life”, p.27, John Wiley & Sons

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• In human affairs, no single person, organisation or social formation ever has a final or an absolutely correct position. It is through conversation, debate and critical discussion that we approach positions that may provide workable solutions.

  Nelson Mandela

  Finals, May, Affair

  Nelson Mandela (2011). “Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations”, p.356, Pan Macmillan

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• I despair of persuading people to drop the familiar and comforting tactic of dichotomy. Perhaps, instead, we might expand the framework of debates by seeking other dichotomies more appropriate than, or simply different from, the conventional divisions. All dichotomies are simplifications, but the rendition of a conflict along differing axes of several orthogonal dichotomies might provide an amplitude of proper intellectual space without forcing us to forgo our most comforting tool of thought.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Axes, Space, People

  "Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 8, 1987.

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