ARGUMENT QUOTES III

quotations about arguments & arguing

It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.

MILAN KUNDERA

Encounter


And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Romeo and Juliet


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


Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself, in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance.

SADI

Gulistan


When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.

C.S. FORESTER

The African Queen


If he take you in hand, sir, with an argument,
He'll bray you in a mortar.

BEN JONSON

The Alchemist


And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Henry V


You are fond of argument, and now you fancy that I am a bag full of arguments.

SOCRATES

Theaetetus


The quiet shaft of ridicule oftimes does more than argument.

WILLIAM SCARBOROUGH

attributed, And I Quote


One single positive weighs more,
You know, than negatives a score.

MATTHEW PRIOR

Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd


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


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


In arguing, answer your opponent's earnest with jest and his jest with earnest.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric


Brief and bitter the debate.

ROBERT BROWNING

Hervé Riel


Argument is a gift of Nature.

CHARLES DICKENS

Barnaby Rudge


And friendly free discussion, calling forth
From the fair jewel, Truth, its latent ray.

JAMES THOMSON

Liberty


You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.

BEN GOLDACRE

Bad Science


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


If ifs and ands were pots and pans
There'd be no work for the tinkers.

ROBERT BLACKHOUSE PEACOCK

A glossary of the dialect of the hundred of Lonsdale


You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

JOHN MORLEY

On Compromise