“There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness.”

—  E.M. Forster , book Howards End

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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 3, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness." by E.M. Forster?
E.M. Forster photo
E.M. Forster 200
English novelist 1879–1970

Related quotes

Warren Farrell photo

“Teaching children to debate without teaching children to listen is divorce training.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 36.

Robert E. Howard photo

“I'll say one thing about an oil boom; it will teach a kid that Life's a pretty rotten thing as quick as anything I can think of.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Farnsworth Wright (c. Summer 1931)
Letters

Jane Austen photo

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”

Dinner was soon followed by tea and coffee, a ten miles' drive home allowed no waste of hours; and from the time of their sitting down to table, it was a quick succession of busy nothings till the carriage came to the door, and Mrs. Norris, having fidgeted about, and obtained a few pheasants' eggs and a cream cheese from the housekeeper, and made abundance of civil speeches to Mrs. Rushworth, was ready to lead the way.
Misattributed
Source: Said by Fanny Price in a 1999 adaptation of Mansfield Park. Actual quote:

Ray Kurzweil photo

“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.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Ethan Allen photo

“There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Retort attributed to Allen, during his captivity among the British, commenting after a picture of Washington was hung in a outhouse, in an anecdote told by Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Lincoln, Vol. 1 (1996) by David Herbert Donald; the documentation on this is scanty, and it conceivably arose as a comical anecdote as early as Lincoln's time.
Variants:
It is most appropriately hung. There is nothing that will make an Englishman shit so quick as the sight of General Washington.
As quoted in Strange But True, America : Weird Tales from All 50 States (2004) by John Hafnor, p. 114
It is most appropriately hung, nothing ever made the British shit like the sight of George Washington.
Disputed

Aaron Klug photo

“I like teaching and the contact with young minds keeps one on one's toes.”

Aaron Klug (1926–2018) British chemist and biophysicist

in his Autobiography http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1982/klug-autobio.html, The Nobel Prizes 1982, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 1983.

Michael Foot photo

“There is nothing wrong with being a Marxist. Their point of view is essential to a democratic debate”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

The Daily Telegraph, 1977
1970s

Thomas Carlyle photo

“Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Pt. I, Bk. VI, ch. 3.
1830s, The French Revolution. A History (1837)

Kent Hovind photo

“You know we’ve been teaching the kids that they’re nothing but animals and today a lot of them act like animals.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

Related topics