Popular quotes about Argument! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Never Get Into An Argument With A Customer. If You Win The Argument You Will Almost Invariably Lose The Sale. And I Don't Like Your Chances For A Sale If You Lose The Argument Either.
David ForemanIn my view, the argument from parsimony is really no argument at all - it typically functions only to shut down more interesting discussion. If history is any guide, it's never a good idea to assume that a scienti๏ฌc problem is cornered.
David EaglemanI don't like watchingpeople get shot so I would be a little skittish about that - squeamish, but I must say, I don't think the argument that this is going to offend Muslims is a legitimate argument.
Jedediah BilaThe argument, now, is about whether Bolshevik Russia was 'better' than Nazi Germany. In the days when the New Left dawned, the argument was about whether Bolshevik Russia was better than America.
Martin AmisBoth law and comedy are heavily focused on thought and viewing all angles. To write a good joke, you have to look at a premise every way possible. And with a good legal argument, you have to see all sides to get the best line of argument for your client. Law school made me a better comic, and comedy has made me a better public speaker.
Troy WalkerAdditional problems are the offspring of poor decisions. When inquiry and advocacy are combined, the goal is no longer 'to win the argument', but to find the best argument.
Peter SengeTheoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it's not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument.
Barack ObamaWhenever women protest and ask for their rights, they are silenced with the argument that the laws are justified under Islam. It is an unfounded argument. It is not Islam at fault, but rather the patriarchal culture that uses its own interpretations to justify whatever it wants.
Shirin EbadiThe strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn't work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good.
Thomas SowellThey say that 'history is an argument without end.' In Thompson's skillful hands, this momentous argument between two old friends on the most critical issue of the last century is thus history at its best. Thompson's judicious and delicious depiction of Nitze and Kennan will fascinate anyone who cares about the Cold War or the ways that human beings shape the future.
Jonathan AlterGeorge W. Bush bought the election - period. End of story. There is no argument. You can try to come up with any argument you can, but there is none.
Gary ColemanLet us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question.../ Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?' / Let us go and make our visit"' 'I'm in love with you,' he said quietly.
John GreenI think we have got to start again and go right back to first principles. The argument I shall advance, surprising as it may seem coming from the author of the earlier chapters, is that, for an understanding of the evolution of modern man, we must begin by throwing out the gene as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution. If there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports? ... Is he manuvering to maximize David Attenborough's television ratings?
Richard DawkinsHillary Clinton says nobody should be deported that entered illegally unless they commit a violent felony, which is an argument for open borders and American people reject that.
Jeff SessionsIn matters of great concern, and which must be done, there is no surer argument of a weak mind than irresolution; to be undetermined where the case is so plain, and the necessity so urgent. To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating, and drinking, and sleeping, from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.
John TillotsonHe who knows only his own side of the case (argument) knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion
John Stuart MillObstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?
Michel de MontaigneThe Old Testament contains in many places, but especially in the book of Job, one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man. The argument gets at the heart of what the loss of nature will mean to us....God seems to be insisting that we are not the center of the universe, that he is quite happy if it rains where there are no people - that God is quite happy with places where there are no people, a radical departure from our most ingrained notions.
Bill McKibbenBob Geldof feels the big picture all the time, even in the smallest argument when someone's saying, 'Well, no, you've got to have three staples in the program, not just two,' Bob feels people dying somewhere.
Richard CurtisMy argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it's a pro-democracy film. And if George W.Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that's his problem.
John SaylesI didn't write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument straight: When her friends or our relatives wondered why I was still so hard on her, I could really lay out the case for what it had been like to be raised by someone who had loathed herself, her husband, even her own name.
Anne LamottI am also full of admiration for Chelsea Manning [formerly PFC Bradley Manning]. Regardless of which side of the argument you're on, he stood up for something he felt wasn't right. That was an extraordinarily brave thing to do, and I think he was unfairly punished for it. It's a really big deal what he did, and he did it for the betterment of all us, including the soldiers on the ground, as well as the civilians caught up in those conflicts.
Benedict CumberbatchThe Silly Putty-like malleability of the institution [marriage], in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Very few people... would accept marriage on it's thirteenth-century terms. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves. (Though I suppose this would not be a very persuasive argument to those who probably also don't believe in evolution).
Elizabeth GilbertBut the indeterminate future is somehow one in which probability and statistics are the dominant modality for making sense of the world. Bell curves and random walks define what the future is going to look like. The standard pedagogical argument is that high schools should get rid of calculus and replace it with statistics, which is really important and actually useful. There has been a powerful shift toward the idea that statistical ways of thinking are going to drive the future.
Peter ThielWe are afraid. But fear confirms life and identifies the source of every successful argument - ourselves.
Gerry SpenceI keep hearing the argument that some things are constitutional while other things are not. The idea is that we should be in favor of all the things that were decided over 200 years ago by a bunch of slave-owning cross-dressers who pooped in holes.
Scott AdamsThe only argument you can make against having Confederate flag as spectacularly shown as it is around the south is the Nazis. I mean, it would be like having the swastika flag...
Whoopi GoldbergThe only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a sรฉance.
Thomas HuxleyI am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity [Wellesley] stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word. How marvelous it would have been to go to a women's college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.
Nora EphronThe ability of Republican leaders to rile up their base - helped along by folks like Rush Limbaugh, some commentators on Fox News - I think created an environment in which Republican voters would punish Republicans for cooperating with me. That hothouse of back-and-forth argument and - and really sharp partisanship I think has been harmful to America.
Barack ObamaThere are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief, without the help of other argument.
Thomas GrayI don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.
John BrownMatt 13:57. Then Jesus told them, 'A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family.' The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.
George CarlinThe fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are (at the time) invisible to us seems to me a compelling argument for religious reverence rather than skeptical empiricism as a response to life's meaning.
David Foster WallaceOne of the things I want to do in the book is to explore how philosophy can be done in literature. I start doing that in the first chapter, by introducing the idea of "philosophy by showing". What literature/philosophy shows is how to look at some important facets of life in a new way, thus changing the frame in which subsequent philosophical argument proceeds.
Philip KitcherSome of the people who are now manipulating photos, such as Andreas Gursky, make the argument - rightly - that the 'straight' photographs of the 1940s and 50s were no such thing. Ansell Adams would slap a red filter on his lens, then spend three days burning and dodging in the dark room, making his prints. That's a manipulation. Even the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with all due respect to him, are notoriously burned and dodged.
Joel SternfeldIn brief, I regard love as a more decisive focus of meaning than death. In terms of Heidegger's argument, this is because I think he misdescribes the importance of the deaths of others and focuses exclusively on my relation to my own death. But, in reality, the deaths of others have a more urgent and immediate impact on our lives than the purely notional knowledge that I too will one day die.
George PattisonThe photograph [of Che Guevara], for a civilization now accustomed to thinking in images, was not the description of a single event... it was an argument.
Umberto EcoA criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.
Clifford IrvingSo long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.
John Stuart MillI can make the argument that people who don't have the biggest ranges but have very unique voices, even if they may be pitchy at times... with the right record that's really unique and distinct, they can have big hits.
Kara DioGuardiIt's the same argument people say about the blogs. The blogs are responsible. No, they're not. The blogs are like anything else. You judge each one based on its own veracity and intelligence and all of that.
Jon StewartPreserve the core, and let the rest flux. In their wonderful bestseller Built to Last, authors James Collins and Jerry Porras make a convincing argument that long-lived companies are able to thrive 50 years or more by retaining a very small heart of unchanging values, and then stimulating progress in everything else. At times "everything" includes changing the business the company operates in, migrating, say, from mining to insurance. Outside the core of values, nothing should be exempt from flux. Nothing.
Kevin Kelly