quotations about arguments & arguing
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
Let thy tongue tang with arguments of state.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Works
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACRE
Bad Science
Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be--or to be indistinguishable from--self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.
NEAL STEPHENSON
Cryptonomicon
One single positive weighs more,
You know, than negatives a score.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd
Though his tongue
Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
I am not arguing with you--I am telling you.
J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
It's a strange truth that no matter how persuaded we might be of our own correctness, the discomfiting realization that others disagree with us causes a paralyzing inability to argue the case convincingly.
BRITTNEY RYAN
The Legend of Holly Claus
Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be
Others will go on speaking and you will not be able to argue back
RAM MOHAN ROY
attributed, Africa Quarterly, 2006
Much virtue in If.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry V
I've heard old sunning stagers
Say, fools for arguments use wagers.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
Slow to argue, but quick to act.
BRET HARTE
John Burns of Gettysburg
For they are yet but ear-kissing arguments.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Lear
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
There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Origins of Totalitarianism
You are fond of argument, and now you fancy that I am a bag full of arguments.
SOCRATES
Theaetetus
I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
speech to the House of Commons
Never maintain an argument with heat and clamour, though you think or know yourself to be in the right.
LORD CHESTERFIELD
letter, October 16, 1747