“The ethical debates are like stones in a stream. The water runs around them. You haven't seen any biological technologies held up for one week by any of these debates.”

Orr
The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

Balls of Steel (2009)

A phrase used in many notable speeches by King, which is actually a quotation of Amos 5:24 in the Bible.
Misattributed
Variant: Justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Source: Letter from the Birmingham Jail

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 8 (“Elector”), p. 363

Complexity and Stupidity, Sam Harris interviews David Krakauer, podcast November 13, 2016 https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/complexity-stupidity

As quoted in “For Utopia, Curb State Controls”, Peggy Baker, Ames Daily Tribune (Ames, Iowa), January 23, 1970

Source: Howards End (1910), Ch. 15
Context: There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.

In Search of Memory (2006)
Context: The life of a biological scientist in the United States is a life of discussion and debate—it is the Talmudic tradition writ large.... The egalitarian structure of American science encourages this camaraderie.... this would not—could not—have taken place in the Austria, the Germany, the France, or perhaps even the England of 1955.

[NewsBank, Bill Nye , ‘the science guy,’ vs. Marsh Blackburn, the climate change skeptic congresswoman, Knoxville News Sentinel: Blogs, Knoxville, Tennessee, February 17, 2014]