Television is chewing gum for the eyes.
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
In a false quarrel there is no true valor.
Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
The most important tactic in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
A long dispute means that both parties are wrong
The clash of ideas is not weakness.Truth reaches its place when tussling with error.
Many people in a rather reckless context claim to 'just tell it like it is'. In actuality, nobody really stresses what one says so much as the motive behind what one says; hence, he is merely blowing hot air and detracting from 'what is'.
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.
The desert, when the sun comes up...I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.
Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken', and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen
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, dominate one's fellows.
They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.
The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.
Two dogs strive for a bone and the third one runs off with it.
Soft words win hard hearts.
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