quotations about arguments & arguing
In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Bombs to settle arguments, the order of the boot
Can you hear them crying in the rubble of Beirut?
THE SPECIALS
"War Crimes"
Last night we had an argument
Oh, oh, yes we did
Although baby, the things I said
I never meant
SMOKEY ROBINSON
"We've Come Too Far to End It Now"
The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge -- much older than the desire for truth -- to command attention.
BARRY UNSWORTH
Sacred Hunger
You may say, I am hot; I say I am not,
Only warm, as the subject on which I am got.
JONATHAN SWIFT
The Famous Speechmaker
Though we cannot out-vote them, we will out-argue them.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life of Samuel Johnson
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACRE
Bad Science
One single positive weighs more,
You know, than negatives a score.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd
We should not investigate facts by the light of arguments, but arguments by the light of facts.
MYSON
attributed, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
Altogether they puzzle me quite,
They all seem wrong and they all seem right.
ROBERT BUCHANAN
Fine Weather on the Digentia
I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life of Samuel Johnson
Testimony is like the shot of a long-bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-bow, equally forcible whether discharged by a giant or a dwarf.
ROBERT BOYLE
attributed, A Treatise on Facts as Subjects of Inquiry by a Jury
A dispute begun in jest ... is continued by the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into enmity.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, No. 23
Debate destroys despatch.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
But yet beware of councils when too full;
Number makes long disputes.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
Brief and bitter the debate.
ROBERT BROWNING
Hervé Riel
I am not arguing with you--I am telling you.
J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
This is no time nor fitting place to mar
The mirthful meeting with a wordy war.
LORD BYRON
Lara
There are two sides to every question.
PROTAGORAS
Protagoras
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much as the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty