Argument & Debate Quotes

Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do; they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart.

Walter Savage Landor

Nothing is as frustrating as arguing with someone who knows what he's talking about.

Sam Ewig

The argument of the strongest is always the best.

Jean de La Fontaine

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

George Bernard Shaw

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Josh Billings

I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.

Dave Barry

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

Michel de Montaigne

The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.

Kin Hubbard

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

Michel de Montaigne

The sounder your argument, the more satisfaction you get out of it.

Edward W. Howe

I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.

Dudley Field Malone

It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.

Pierre De Beaumarchais

Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get.

Thomas Carlyle

Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension. Dissent (which come from the Latin, dis and sentire) means originally to feel apart from others. People who disagree have an argument, but people who dissent have a quarrel. People may disagree and both may count themselves in the majority. But a person who dissents is by definition in a minority. A liberal society thrives on disagreement but is killed by dissension. Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.

Daniel J. Boorstin

As debate is rare in the House of Representatives, since nearly all real business is done in the committees, it is very natural that such debate as there is should be very oratorical, should be

D. W. Brogan, The American Chara

When people generally are aware of a problem, it can be said to have entered the public consciousness. When people get on their hind legs and holler, the problem has not only entered the public consciousness -- it has also become a part of the public conscience. At that point, things in our democracy begin to hum.

Hubert Humphrey

Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear.

Thomas C. Haliburton

At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right.

Miguel de Unamuno, in a confront

True disputants are like true sportsman: their whole delight is in the pursuit.

Alexander Pope

When much dispute has past, we find our tenets just the same as last.

Alexander Pope