Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Argument & Debate.
Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let him save face? He didn't ask for your opinion. He didn't want it. Why argue with him? You can't win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence, his judgment, and his self-respect, and he'll resent your triumph. That will make him strike back, but it will never make him want to change his mind. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friend
We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.
Antisthenes
Two dogs strive for a bone and the third one runs off with it.
Proverb
Soft words win hard hearts.
I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
Nora Ephron
When a subject is highly controversial... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
Virginia Woolf
How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
Walt Whitman
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
William Hazlitt
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
Louis D. Brandeis
When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid -- in which case all comment is superfluous -- or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.
Miguel de Unamuno
All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
Gilbert Seldes
Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.
Joseph Addison
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
Jonathan Swift
The dust of controversy is merely the falsehood flying off.
Thomas Carlyle
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
Samuel Butler
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde
When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.
Marie EbnerEschenbach
Weakness on both sides is, the motto of all quarrels.
Voltaire (FrançoisMarie Arouet)
Men argue, nature acts.
