Quotes about argument
page 12

“I am continually amused by the Communist argument that the United States tries to prevent the less-developed countries from industrializing in order to keep them subservient to herself. In our extended dealings with the American aid authorities, we have never found this to be the case; on the contrary, they have helped us with a wide variety of industrial projects, including those that compete directly with American industries. The Americans have enough sense to prefer strong and prosperous friends, and they realize that their most lucrative international trade is with other highly industrialized countries, not with weak and backward ones.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 301
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

Sense, Strong, Help, Country

“Revelation can be supplemented by reason. Christ Himself gave reasons for His belief, and put in modern form, these reasons are, to my mind, conclusive. You remember the passage in the earliest Gospel: "But as touching the dead, that they are raised; have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place concerning the bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err" (Mark xii, 26 R. V.) Herein, in a form adapted to Jewish thought is "the one great argument which has made most sincere believers in God believers in Immortality also.”

Ernest Barnes (1874–1953) English mathematician and clergyman

citing H. Rashdall: Doctrine and Development, Methuen, 1898 p. 177.
Spiritualism and the Christian Faith (1918)

God, Books, Reading, Christ

“Clavain saw it all with sudden, heart-stopping clarity: all that mattered was the here and now. All that mattered was survival. Sentience that bowed down and accepted its own extinction—no matter what the long-term arguments, no matter how good the greater cause—was not the kind of sentience he was interested in preserving.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 38 (pp. 663-664)

Heart

“The practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable part of his argument to show, how these powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favorite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 7: General View of the Remainder of My Life (p. 192)

God, Hostility, Truth, Sex

“The necessary precondition for the birth of science as we know it is, it would seem, the diffusion through society of the belief that the universe is both rational and contingent. Such a belief is the presupposition of modern science and cannot by any conceivable argument be a product of science. One has to ask: Upon what is this belief founded?”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

Foolishness to the Greeks. Eerdmans, 1986, 71.

Birth, Universe, Science

“However, the only way these arguments acquire any purchase is in the context of an international, read western, commitment to Jewish supremacy, wherein Jews are seen as white Europeans defending white European values and civilization against the primitive Arab hordes.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle"

Way, Reading

“I rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States. Under these circumstances, of course, my functions are terminated here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, and I will say but very little more. The occasion does not invite me to go into argument, and my physical condition would not permit me to do so if it were otherwise; and yet it seems to become me to say something on the part of the state I here represent, on an occasion so solemn as this.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

1860s, Speech before the U.S. Senate (1861)

People, Appearance, Parting

“But we are not just witnessing a relativisation of time according to social contexts or alternatively the return to time reversibility as if reality could become entirely captured in cyclical myths. The transformation is more profound: it is the mixing of tenses to create a forever universe, not self-expanding but self-maintaining, not cyclical but random, not recursive but incursive: timeless time, using technology to escape the contexts of its existence, and to appropriate selectively any value each context could offer to the ever-present. I argue that this is happening now not only because capitalism strives to free itself from all constraints, since this has been the capitalist system’s tendency all along, without being able fully to materialize it. Neither is it sufficient to refer to the cultural and social revolts against clock time, since they have characterized the history of the last century without actually reversing its domination, indeed furthering its logic by including clock time distribution of life in the social contract. Capital’s freedom from time and culture’s escape from the clock are decisively facilitated by new information technologies, and embedded in the structure of the network society.
The transformation of time as surveyed in this chapter does not concern all processes, social groupings, and territories in our societies, although it does affect the entire planet. What I call timeless time is only the emerging, dominant form of social time in the network society, as the space of flows does not negate the existence of places. It is precisely my argument that social domination is exercised through the selective inclusion and exclusion of functions and people in different temporal and spatial frames.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Rise of the Network Society, 1996, p. 433–434 as quoted in: Wayne Hope (2006) Global Capitalism and the Critique of Real Time http://www.sagepub.com/dicken6/Sociology%20Online%20readings/CH%202%20-%20HOPE.pdf. Sage publications. p. 289

Life, People, Exercises, History

“This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian nations. For example, in Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and specially Rousseau.

But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards.

The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzsche´s half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others.

If anyone doubted that the Christian world of today has reached a frightful state of torpor and brutalization (not forgetting the recent crimes committed in the Boers and in China, which were defended by the clergy and acclaimed as heroic feats by all the world powers), the extraordinary success of Nietzsche´s works is enough to provide irrefutable proof of this.

Some disjointed writings, striving after effect in a most sordid manner, appear, written by a daring, but limited and abnormal German, suffering from power mania. Neither in talent nor in their basic argument to these writings justify public attention. In the days of Kant, Leibniz, or Hume, or even fifty years ago, such writings would not only have received no attention, but they would not even have appeared. But today all the so called educated people are praising the ravings of Mr. N, arguing about him, elucidating him, and countless copies of his works are printed in all languages.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

People, World, Education, Law

“If a man cannot stand up in Charleston or Savannah or Richmond and say that he believes the right of every man to the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness to be self-evident; if he be tarred and feathered for saying it, or ridden upon a rail, or ducked in a horse-pond, or driven out of his pulpit or professorial chair, or shot down in his office, or waited upon by a committee who cannot be answerable for the chivalric impatience of their fellow-citizens — Mr. Douglas says it is a proof that his political principles are ruinous and fatal; which is simply the argument of a highway robber to his victim whom he knocks on the head, that if he didn't carry so much money in his pocket he wouldn't be robbed.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Life, Money, Happiness, Waiting

“A witty illustration or an apt story will accomplish more than columns of argument.”

Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician

My Memories of Eighty Years (1922), p. 318

“No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.”

Karl Popper book The Open Society and Its Enemies

Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

“I am prepared to concede without further argument that all the theoretical constructions, including geometry, which are used in the various branches of physics are only imperfect instruments to enable the world of empirical fact to be reconstructed in our minds.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

First Lecture, The Definition of Probability, p. 8
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

World

“God's openness to human critique is reiterated throughout the rabbinic stories of disputations between God and Jewish religious heroes. For example, in protest against God's threatening imprecations toward those who worshipped the golden calf, Moses argues against God's punitive intent: "Sovereign of the Universe, how can Israel realize what they have done, seeing that they have been raised in Egypt?" Moses reminds God that the Ten Commandments were not given to the Children of Israel, but to Moses himself, and that therefore the Children of Israel should not stand in violation of the law. It is Moses alone who may be judged culpable. Hearing the argument, God concedes, "By your life, Moses, you have spoken well."”

Harold M. Schulweis (1925–2014) American rabbi and theologian

Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey (2008)

Life, God, Children, Law

“I think the answer is that the case stands for the proposition that business people who feel that their faith is being burdened, that they get to come into court and have their day at court and make this argument. So, you cannot keep them out of court just because they’re business folks. And that is going to apply to everybody from the cake baker, to kosher butchers, to halal food distributors, across the board. Now, how those future cases will come out will depend on the specific facts of the case, of course. But I think that the general proposition here is a really, really important one. And that is that you do not give up your religious liberty right if you choose to start a business.”

Josh Hawley (1979) United States Senator from Missouri

Interview with Hobby Lobby attorney Joshua Hawley http://mbcpathway.com/2014/06/30/interview-hobby-lobby-attorney-joshua-hawley/ (June 30, 2014)

People, Faith, Food, Feeling

“Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce — yes, announce — that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by... liberals.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, September 14, 2006, "Dems Vs. Wal-mart" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will091406.php3 at jewishworldreview.com. 2000s

Way, Understanding, Thinking

“But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. "Might makes right," and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.”

Adin Ballou (1803–1890) American minister

Christian Non-Resistance: In All its Important Bearings, Illustrated and Defended (1846).

Truth, Error, Madness

“When a lady does consent to listen to an argument against her own opinions, she is always predetermined to withstand it — to listen only with her bodily ears, keeping the mental organs resolutely closed against the strongest reasoning.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Gilbert to Helen

“One should emulate works and deeds of virtue, not arguments about it.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

“My growing environmental awareness only added more fuel to the argument for having no children. And the logic of never-ending consumption didn't just harm the environment, it killed people too.”

Xiaolu Guo (1973) Chinese-British novelist and film director

Once Upon A Time in the East: A Story of Growing up, Chatto & Windus, 2017, page 305 (ISBN 9781784740689).
Memoir, 2017

Children, People

“…it's not my job to preach a sermon. Art is anyhow a homily. My job is to speak in living images, not in arguments. I must exhibit life full-face, not discuss life.”

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) Russian writer

A letter to Zhukovsky, January 1848, quoted in Sculpting in Time (p49) by Andrei Tarkovsky

Life, Art

“Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Source: Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (1994), pp. 35-36.

Love, God, Light, Heart

“Much was made by abolitionists that the King James version of the Bible didn't use the word slaves, but, instead, servants. This meant, in their minds, that God didn't really approve of slavery. But that argument was linguistic at best. Slavery was codified and even sanctified in the tenth commandment, throwing slaves (and wives) in with other property belonging to one's neighbor that one must not covet. The Bible even regulated--as opposed to banning outright--the killing of slaves, stating that if a slave were beaten to death, the slave owner should be punished (though not killed himself, as would be his fate were he to kill a freeman), but if the slave didn't die until a day or two after the beating, the slave owner "shall not be punished, for he [the slave] is his money."”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 56

Death, Money, God, Fate

“The only argument the world will listen to now is the argument of personal holiness. It has heard all the rest and rejected them.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Retreat to Priests, Washington, D.C., p. 19, quoted in Bernard Hayes, C.R., To Live as Jesus Did (Locust Valley, N.Y.: Living Flame Press, 1981), p. 108. There is no book by Sheen with the title Retreat to Priests. Hayes is presumably quoting from a transcription of Sheen's 1974 retreat for priests of the Washington diocese. This was recorded on reel-to-reel tape and later issued in nine 60-minute tapes under the title Renewal and Reconciliation.

World, Personality

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Men, War, People, Age

“Beware! By Allah the son of Abu Quhafah (Abu Bakr) dressed himself with it (the caliphate) and he certainly knew that my position in relation to it was the same as the position of the axis in relation to the hand-mill. The flood water flows down from me and the bird cannot fly upto me. I put a curtain against the caliphate and kept myself detached from it.
Then I began to think whether I should assault or endure calmly the blinding darkness of tribulations wherein the grown up are made feeble and the young grow old and the true believer acts under strain till he meets Allah (on his death). I found that endurance thereon was wiser. So I adopted patience although there was pricking in the eye and suffocation (of mortification) in the throat. I watched the plundering of my inheritance till the first one went his way but handed over the Caliphate to Ibn al-Khattab after himself.
(Then he quoted al-A`sha's verse):
My days are now passed on the camel's back (in difficulty) while there were days (of ease) when I enjoyed the company of Jabir's brother Hayyan.
It is strange that during his lifetime he wished to be released from the caliphate but he confirmed it for the other one after his death. No doubt these two shared its udders strictly among themselves. This one put the Caliphate in a tough enclosure where the utterance was haughty and the touch was rough. Mistakes were in plenty and so also the excuses therefore. One in contact with it was like the rider of an unruly camel. If he pulled up its rein the very nostril would be slit, but if he let it loose he would be thrown. Consequently, by Allah people got involved in recklessness, wickedness, unsteadiness and deviation.
Nevertheless, I remained patient despite length of period and stiffness of trial, till when he went his way (of death) he put the matter (of Caliphate) in a group and regarded me to be one of them. But good Heavens! what had I to do with this "consultation"? Where was any doubt about me with regard to the first of them that I was now considered akin to these ones? But I remained low when they were low and flew high when they flew high. One of them turned against me because of his hatred and the other got inclined the other way due to his in-law relationship and this thing and that thing, till the third man of these people stood up with heaving breasts between his dung and fodder. With him his children of his grand-father, (Umayyah) also stood up swallowing up Allah's wealth like a camel devouring the foliage of spring, till his rope broke down, his actions finished him and his gluttony brought him down prostrate.
At that moment, nothing took me by surprise, but the crowd of people rushing to me. It advanced towards me from every side like the mane of the hyena so much so that Hasan and Husayn were getting crushed and both the ends of my shoulder garment were torn. They collected around me like the herd of sheep and goats. When I took up the reins of government one party broke away and another turned disobedient while the rest began acting wrongfully as if they had not heard the word of Allah saying:
That abode in the hereafter, We assign it for those who intend not to exult themselves in the earth, nor (to make) mischief (therein); and the end is (best) for the pious ones. (Qur'an, 28:83)
Yes, by Allah, they had heard it and understood it but the world appeared glittering in their eyes and its embellishments seduced them. Behold, by Him who split the grain (to grow) and created living beings, if people had not come to me and supporters had not exhausted the argument and if there had been no pledge of Allah with the learned to the effect that they should not acquiesce in the gluttony of the oppressor and the hunger of the oppressed I would have cast the rope of Caliphate on its own shoulders, and would have given the last one the same treatment as to the first one. Then you would have seen that in my view this world of yours is no better than the sneezing of a goat.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Known as the Sermon of ash-Shiqshiqiyyah (roar of the camel), It is said that when Amir al-mu'minin reached here in his sermon a man of Iraq stood up and handed him over a writing. Amir al-mu'minin began looking at it, when Ibn `Abbas said, "O' Amir al-mu'minin, I wish you resumed your Sermon from where you broke it." Thereupon he replied, "O' Ibn `Abbas it was like the foam of a Camel which gushed out but subsided." Ibn `Abbas says that he never grieved over any utterance as he did over this one because Amir al-mu'minin could not finish it as he wished to.
Nahj al-Balagha

Death, Hunger, Children, People

“There are many arguments about the role of religion in the history of this country. But the fundamental fact still remains that India has been a historic home to all the great religions of the world. I believe this pluralism and this ability to have an individual element in your religion is culturally specific to India…I came to India as an orthodox Christian thinking there was only one way to God. I now believe there are many ways to God and that came from living in India.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

Source: " Former BBC-India Chief Highlights Multiple Paths to God http://hafsite.org/media/pr/former-bbc-india-chief-highlights-multiple-paths-god", hafsite.org, Hindu American Foundation (HAF), 19 October 2010

God, World, Religion, Way

“It bears repetition that an argument against representation is not anti-scientific at all. It is merely an argument against a particular scientific strategy that assumes complexity can be reduced to specific features and then represented in a machine. Instead it is an argument for the appreciation of the nature of complexity, something that can perhaps be 'repeated' in a machine, should the machine itself be complex enough to cope with the distributed character of complexity.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 86

Nature

“Hitler’s undetermined political future becomes even less surprising if we bear in mind that the intellectual origins of Fascism share central tenets with the non-Marxist Left. According to one argument, despite its eventual collision with the conservative Right once Fascism tried to come to power, early Fascism had been in its promise, rather than in its eventual application, more socialist than capitalist, more plebeian than bourgeois.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (2011), p. 253

Future

“Member for Islwyn was going to have a single currency willy-nilly. He has already made up his mind. The argument that he uses is that, if others have it, we must. That is an argument for a flock of sheep, not for people who are sent here to analyse the problem and to use our minds and our reason to say which course we should follow.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (20 November 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108291 Post-Prime Ministerial

People, Problem

“Some maintain that such a tendency distorts the curve of tradition. Do they derive their arguments from the future or the past? The future does not belong to them, as far as we are aware, and one be singularly ingenuous to seek to measure that which exists by that which exists no longer.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Du Cubisme (1912)

Past, Future

“The nature of a Divine Being is seen more clearly in deeds which are loving than in deeds which are marvelous. He does not need miracle to make us love him or to prove that he is more than man. The unanswerable argument for his religion is that wherever he is sincerely followed men’s lives are changed.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.112

Love, Men, Religion, Nature

“'BUT science and art! You are denying science and art: that is you are denying that by which humanity lives.' People constantly make this rejoinder to me, and they employ: this method in order to reject my arguments without examination. 'He rejects science and art, he wishes man to revert to a state of savagery - why listen to him or discuss with him?' But this is unjust. Not only do I not repudiate science, that is, the reasonable activity of humanity, and art - the expression of that reasonable activity - but it is just on behalf of that reasonable activity and its expression that I speak, only that It may be possible for mankind to escape from the savage state into which it is rapidly lapsing thanks to the false teaching of our time. It is only on that account that I speak as I do.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

People, Art, Science, Time

“This language [LISP] induces humorous arguments among programmers, often being damned and praised for the same feature.”

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

“We should stop using the argument that if we build more factories here, we will have to buy two or three less F-16s. That's really not the case. First, it is needed to set the goals. Let's set the goal, and I'm certain that we will find resources for it. And if, there is no choice, and the question of the F-16 will stand opposed to human dignity, I will decide in favor of the human being, and not in favor of the F-16.”

Amir Peretz (1952) Israeli politician

Attributed

Question

“The argument we have about abortion is not about abortion. It's about when life begins. And we argue it, and we argue, and we argue! And I say we take all the people who think they know and yell and scream and they're sure when life begins and they're sure when life ends, and we lock them in a room. And we tell them to figure it out. And they don't come out until they do. And if they can't, then we kill them.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Last Laugh ‘05 (2005)

Life, People, Thinking

“Clearly, the central argument of the opponents to marriage is that it is an institution whose purpose is to stabilize something that cannot be stabilized, to make something last that will not last. All are agreed that physical love is as natural an instinct as huger or thirst, but the permanence of love is not instinctive. If, as is the case with so many men, physical love must have change, then why the promise of a life's devotion?”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Love, Life, Men, Marriage

“It has been a continuing theme of this book that our commitment to any approach to the problems of existence (the overcoming of the world, the humanization of the world, and the struggle with the world first among them) can enjoy no definitive justification. Its demands always exceed, immeasurably, its grounds for making them. It says, “Follow me.” It can never give a conclusive reason to do so. All that it can do is to make an incomplete argument and a defeasible appeal. It cannot escape the circularity in all our large-scale transformative projects: for better or worse, each of them is a partly self-fulfilling prophecy. If it is embraced and it works, it remakes part of experience in its image.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger The Religion of the Future

Source: The Religion of the Future (2014), p. 298-9

Books, World, Problem, Parting

“It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Lenin᾿s Collected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 491–534
Collected Works

Books, Quotes, Parting

“The appreciation of a painting or a piece of music, for example, or even falling in love, is all about our subjectivity. But to decide that the entire universe operates in such a way, let alone to go to war because we are so convinced we are right that others must agree with us or die, that surely should demand a higher level of argument than 'It's true because I really, really feel it is.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

Love, War, Music, Way

“Lucas and Sargent’s main argument was that Keynesian economics had ignored the full implications of the effect of expectations on behavior. The way to proceed, they argued, was to assume that people formed expectations as rationally as they could, based on the information they had. Thinking of people as having rational expectations had three major implications, all highly damaging to Keynesian macroeconomics. …
The first implication was that existing macroeconomic models could not be used to help design policy. … The second implication was that when rational expectations were introduced in Keynesian models, these models actually delivered very un-Keynesian conclusions. … The third implication was that if people and firms had rational expectations, it was wrong to think of policy as the control of a complicated but passive system. Rather, the right way was to think of policy as a game between policy makers and the economy. …
To summarize: When rational expectations were introduced, Keynesian models could not be used to determine policy; Keynesian models could not explain long-lasting deviations of output from the natural level of output; the theory of policy had to be redesigned, using the tools of game theory.”

Olivier Blanchard (1948) French economist

Source: Macroeconomics (7th Edition, 2017), Ch. 24 : Epilogue: The Story of Macroeconomics

People, Way, Behavior, Game

“According to the traditional interpretation Plato’s attitude against rhetoric is a rejection of the doxa, or opinion, and of the impact of images, upon which the art of rhetoric relies; at the same time his attitude is considered as a defense of the theoretical, rational speech, that is, of episteme. The fundamental argument of Plato’s critique of rhetoric usually is exemplified by the thesis, maintained, among other things, in the Gorgias, that only he who "knows" [epistatai] can speak correctly; for what would be the use of the "beautiful," of the rhetorical speech, if it merely sprang from opinions [doxa], hence from not knowing? … Plato’s … rejection of rhetoric, when understood in this manner, assumes that Plato rejects every emotive element in the realm of knowledge. But in several of his dialogues Plato connects the philosophical process, for example, with eros, which would lead to the conclusion that he attributes a decisive role to the emotive, seen even in philosophy as the absolute science.”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 28

Beauty, Art, Knowledge, Decision

“He was in LOGIC a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in analytic;
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair 'twixt south, and south-west side:
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute,
He'd undertake to prove, by force
Of argument, a man's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl,
A calf an alderman, a goose a justice,
And rooks Committee-men and Trustees.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 65
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Men, Justice, Change, Horse

“Empirical research does not, as of yet, seem to have legitimately gotten anyone 100 percent of the way to libertarianism; there remain, at the very least, some public goods and, in principle, the need for economic redistribution. Libertarian philosophy fills the gap between what free-market economists can prove about the undesirable consequences of government intervention and the absolute prohibition of all intervention. Consequentialist and nonconsequentialist arguments for libertarianism may be antithetical in principle, but they are symbiotic in practice.”

Jeffrey Friedman (political scientist) (1959) American political scientist

Source: “What’s wrong with Libertarianism”, p. 444

Way

“The view of human society and personality that informs this argument refuses the consistently disappointing and misleading attempt to distinguish a permanent core and a variable periphery of human nature. It takes into account the loose, contradictory, and complex set of motivations and aspirations that people demonstrate in the societies it wants to reform. It recognizes that even the most intimate and seemingly unyielding of these propensities are influenced and cumulatively remade by the institutional and imaginative context in which they exist. But it rejects as unrealistic any institutional scheme whose success requires a sudden and drastic shift in what people are like here and now.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), p. 500

People, Disappointment, Imagination, Motivation

“[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh.”

Anton Chekhov book Verotchka

Verotchka (1887)

Understanding, Change

“I don't get that -- people going to war over religion. I don't know, I could see going to war over justice or democracy or even revenge. But if you're going to war over religion, now you're just killing people in an argument over who has the better imaginary friend.”

Richard Jeni (1957–2007) American comedian

CC Presents: Richard Jeni, aired 5 May 2002 http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/6kmgg7/comedy-central-presents-brought-up-catholic. Comedy Central Presents (2002)

War, People, Religion, Justice

“The strong appearance of design [in nature] allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.”

Michael J. Behe (1952) American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

" Design for Living http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/opinion/07behe.html", New York Times, 7 February 2005.

Nature, Strong, Appearance

“If the whole of natural theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication: If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind; if this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs, and believe that the arguments on which it is established exceed the objections which lie against it?”

David Hume book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Philo to Cleanthes, Part XII
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Life, People, Lie, Intelligence

“The fact that each nation came to believe in the virtue of whatever policy happened to be in effect when recovery began supports [the] argument that haphazard economic vacillations play an important role in determining which policy strategies become constructed as economically efficacious. This also tends to undermine the realist/utilitarian view, which suggests that policy improves over time as rational policymakers learn more about universal economic laws from experience, because wildly inconsistent policies won favor in different contexts.”

Frank Dobbin (1956) American sociologist

Frank Dobbin (1993), "The Social Construction of the Great Depression: Industrial Policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain and France," in: Theory and Society 22, p. 47; As cited in: Kieran Healy, "The new institutionalism and Irish social policy." Social Policy in Ireland: Principals, Practices and Problems. Oaktree Press, Dublin (1998).

Law, Support, Learning, Universe

“Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

This may have arisen as a paraphrase of statements found in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), "An Absurd Reasoning", or one found in The Novelist as Philosopher: Studies in French Fiction 1935-1960 (1962) edited by John Cruikshank, p. 218
Disputed

“[Jensen] does not believe that [heritability] estimates alone can decide the issue of genetic versus environmental hypotheses. However, he argues that the probability of a genetic hypothesis will be much enhanced if, in addition to evidencing high [heritability], we find we can falsify literally every plausible environmental hypothesis one by one. He challenges social scientists who believe in an environmental explanation of the IQ gap between the races to bring their hypotheses forward. Given his competence and the present state of the social sciences, the result is something of a massacre…. Far too many of Jensen's critics have not taken up the challenge to refute him in any serious way, rather they have elected for various forms of escape, the most popular of which has been to seize on an argument put forward by the distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard C. Lewontin.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

Source: Race, IQ, and Jensen (1980), pp. 40, 54. Quoted from Nevin Sesardic, Making Sense of Heritability (2005), p. 136.

Way, Science

“Even good arguments fail, if they are spiced with digressions.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

“The important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

Thinking

“In the discovery of hidden things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.”

William Gilbert (astronomer) book De Magnete

Ostriker, J.P. and Mitton, Simon (2013) Heart of Darkness p.9.
De Magnete (1600), quote about science

“It should be obvious that the criticism of this opinion serves not to present counter-arguments, but to discredit and attack me because I've deviated from the prescribed path. In his intriguing and thoughtful essay on My Race Problem and Ours, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, a self-described social Democrat, correctly observes that 'If racial loyalty is deemed essentially and morally virtuous, then a black person's adoption of positions that are deemed racially disloyal will be seen by racial loyalists as a supremely threatening sin, one warranting the harsh punishments that have historically been visited upon alleged traitors.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Perhaps this is the defensive solidarity to which Richard Wright refers. If so, it is a reaction I understand, but resolutely decline to follow.
1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Law, Understanding, Problem, Personality

“So the thing I object to about government isn't its organizational feature. Organization has to be accomplished. It is the coercive nature of government organization. My argument is that we can organize better without coercion.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Rampart Institute, (Society for Libertarian Life edition), from 1977 speech, p. 8.
Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978)

Nature

“[S]hould we attempt to use sensible words to deal with these problems, they will be caught up immediately in the structures of the official arguments which accompany the official modern ideologies — arguments as sterile as the ideologies are irrelevant. Our society contains no method of serious self-criticism for the simple reason that it is now a self-justifying system which generates its own logic.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Problem

“Welfarism and excessive spending and deficits and socialism divide us, because everybody has to go to Washington. Those who have the biggest clout, whose who are the best lobbyists, those who go and they grab. And whether it's the medical industrial complex, or the banking industry, or the military industrial complex, that's who ends up controlling our government… For so long, conservatives and constitutionalists have lost the argument, they lost the moral highground. Because those who want to give things away, not talking about where they steal it from, but they want to give things and take care of people, they get the moral highground and they come by as being compassionate. And we who believe in liberty, we lack compassion. But the truth is, there's only one compassionate system known to man, and that is freedom and personal responsibility, then there's enough wealth, and then we will all have personal responsibility to use this compassion that we have, first to take care of our families and friends and neighbors, and there would be so much wealth that we could spread this wealth around the world.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

New Hampshire Homeschool Meet and Greet, September 30, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0-OIdm6Z8 2000s, 2006-2009

People, Truth, World, Family

“Ever since the early '80s I have applied feathers to many of the small dinosaurs, and never did smaller theropods without them. I did so because birds evolved from small theropods, and the evidence for the latter having the high metabolic rates that would have promoted the evolution of insulation was solid. I used to receive endless grief for this. The counter-argument was that no feathers had been found on any dinosaurs, and scales had, so I was engaging in unfounded speculation. But these points were actually not scientific. Scales had been discovered only on large dinosaurs, so illustrating small ones with scales was no less speculative than putting feathers on them. It would be like illustrating little mammals with naked skin if all we had was elephants and rhinos to base mammal integument on. I knew that my thesis was logical, so I bided my time.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Autobiography, part III http://gspauldino.com/part3.html, gspauldino.com

Bird, Time

“"I did not ask for objections, but for comments, or helpful suggestions. I looked for more loyalty from you, Captain Hornblower." That made the whole argument pointless. If Leighton only wanted servile agreement there was no sense in continuing.”

C. S. Forester book A Ship of the Line

A Ship of the Line (1938)

Sense, Help, Loyalty

“No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.”

Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987) Lithuanian violinist

Heifetz official web site http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/about/quotes.html

People

“The scientific process of peer-review seeks out and exposes fraud by design. But antievolutionist arguments are withheld from peer-review because they are driven entirely by frauds including misstatements, out-of-context quote-mining, and contrived or distorted falsehoods, and terms erroneously redefined into instigative reactionary nonsense unintelligible as anything other than propaganda. In short, if creationists knew how to expose a fraud, they wouldn’t be creationists anymore.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"13th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myfifz3C0mI Youtube (September 3, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Quotes, Fraud

“We show that it is natural to introduce the concept of black-hole entropy as the measure of information about a black-hole interior which is inaccessible to an exterior observer. Considerations of simplicity and consistency, and dimensional arguments indicate that the black-hole entropy is equal to the ratio of the black-hole area to the square of the Planck length times a dimensionless constant of order unity. A different approach making use of the specific properties of Kerr black holes and of concepts from information theory leads to the same conclusion, and suggests a definite value for the constant.”

Jacob Bekenstein (1947–2015) Mexican-Israeli physicist

[Black Holes and Entropy, Phys. Rev. D, 7, 8, 2333–2346, 15 April 1973, 10.1103/PhysRevD.7.2333]

Nature, Time

“I reluctantly concluded that there was no way for me to help bring into being the Muslim culture I'd dreamed of, the progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture which is what I've always understood as freedom. Not me, not in this lifetime, no chance. Actually Existing Islam, which has all but deified its Prophet, a man who always fought passionately against such deification, which has supplanted a priest-free religion by a priest-ridden one, which makes literalism a weapon and redescription a crime, will never let the likes of me in.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Address at Columbia University (1991)

Religion, Dreams, Way, Freedom

“The third argument, enclosing and defending the other two, consists in the development of those principles of logic according to which the humble argument is the first stage of a scientific inquiry into the origin of the three Universes, but of an inquiry which produces, not merely scientific belief, which is always provisional, but also a living, practical belief, logically justified in crossing the Rubicon with all the freightage of eternity.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Source: A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908), V

Universe

“I've seen the argument saying, 'Well, these are private companies, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and whatever. They have the right to ban whoever they want, they can set their own rules they should just make up rules to get rid of Alex Jones.' It seems pretty fair, right? Their playground, their rules. I also, kind of disagree. I think that social media has grown so big that it's become an extension of your voice, that if you are not on social media, and you are taken off of social media in a way that isn't really specified why, then it can be seen as a way of censorship.”

PewDiePie (1989) Swedish YouTuber and video game commentator

NINJA RESPECTS ALL WOMANS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv8UnA_1Os8 (15 August 2018) 2018, NINJA RESPECTS ALL WOMANS

Way, Thinking

“You know you've won the argument when the only counter argument they can find is that you are white or male or old.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/626999005747220480 (30 July 2015) Twitter

“Hayek fails to account either for the passion among intellectuals for equality, or for the resulting success of socialists and their egalitarian successors in driving the liberal idea from the stage of politics. This passion for equality is not a new thing, and indeed pre-dates socialism by many centuries, finding its most influential expression in the writings of Rousseau. There is no consensus as to how equality might be achieved, what it would consist in if achieved, or why it is so desirable in the first place. But no argument against the cogency or viability of the idea has the faintest chance of being listened to or discussed by those who have fallen under its spell.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Hayek and conservatism", in Edward Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

Idea, Passion, Chance, Success

“Men! When you cannot win an argument, you either run away or resort to force.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Egwene al'Vere
(15 November 1990)

Men

“I didn’t come to the personal conclusion that God probably didn’t exist because I was angry…. It wasn’t merely a reaction to the problems I saw in many religious beliefs and communities, or to the negative experiences I’d had—I had already made my peace with my past and saw that religious communities were making progress on addressing dehumanizing beliefs and practices. Rather, it was a conclusion I came to through intellectual and personal consideration. As I studied religion, I took a step back and reflected on the arguments for and against the existence of God, and was underwhelmed by the evidence. Recalling my nontheism in childhood, it suddenly seemed odd that I had adopted a theistic worldview after not having had one in my youth. It became apparent that believing in a divine force simply didn’t resonate with my experiences or how I understood the world.”

Chris Stedman (1987) American activist

Source: Faitheist (2012), Chapter 5, “Unholier Than Thou: Saying Goodbye to God” (p. 84)

God, Youth, World, Peace

“Truth can never suffer from argument and inquiry; but may be essentally injured by the tyrannous interference of her pretended advocates. Impede her energies by the pains and penalties of law, and, like the Fame of Virgil, she will creep along the ground, diminutive in stature, and shrunk with apprehension: give free scope to all her tendencies, and she will soon collect her might, dilate herself to the fullness of her dimensions, and reach the stars.”

Gilbert Wakefield (1756–1801) English scholar

A Letter to Sir John Scott https://books.google.com/books?id=L8NbAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA24&dq=%22Truth+can+never%22 (21 July 1798), page 24. Cf. Aeneid 4.174–177.

Pain, Truth, Law, Penalty

“… after the war, he became a big proponent of the argument that chemical warfare or gas warfare was actually a more humane form of warfare than shrapnel and bombs, because he saw what all those shrapnel and bombs did to all the boys who climbed out of the trenches and tried to cross no man's land, with German machine guns and artillery on the other side, he said I'll take the gas any day. I'm not making the case for gas warfare, but the idea that getting killed by gas is, more horrible than getting ripped apart by shrapnel and bullets is not one I buy. And when I see the Obama administration putting pictures of people killed by gas up on the internet, I say "let's put pictures of the people who got killed by shrapnel up there, and lets have a debate about which pictures look worse."”

John Mearsheimer (1947) American political scientist

It won't even be an interesting debate, getting killed by shrapnel, in my opinion is a lot more gruesome and a lot worse. John Mearsheimer on America Unhinged https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqqzh59sVo provided by the Center for the National Interest. The bold text is Mearsheimer speaking about B. H. Liddell Hart's experience with chemical warfare, and the rest is of his opinion of it.

War, People, Boy, Idea

“In Plato’s Republic one finds the proposition: God, being perfect, cannot change (not for the better, since "perfect" means that there can be no better; not for the worse, since ability to change for the worse, to decay, degenerate, or become corrupt, is a weakness, an imperfection). The argument may seem cogent, but it is so only if two assumptions are valid: that it is possible to conceive of a meaning for "perfect" that excludes change in any and every respect and that we must conceive God as perfect in just this sense.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (1984)

God, Sense, Change, Perfection

“I think that in the little argument going on now in New York and the differences that have arisen there are emerging three very fundamental principles. One is that it is improper to negotiate or attempt to negotiate or attempt to gain concessions by a great Power out of a little Power by means of occupying that country with your forces. It is the tradition — and I am not saying of one or other country only they have done it — but it is nineteenth-century imperialism that really must be left behind, and I believe that a solution will be found and the principle accepted that those of us who represent the great Powers will not do that.”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

"Mr. Bevin on World Politics", The Times, 1 April 1946, p. 4.
Speech at Bristol, 30 March 1946, referring to the negotiations over the United Nations Charter.

Thinking, Country

“Television people have put blinders on and they absolutely refuse—and movie people too—to admit that they can have any influence for ill in our society. You know the argument: 'We only reflect what's going on. We do not perpetuate it.' And yet not a week goes by in this town where there's not an award ceremony where they're patting each other on the back, saying, 'You raised AIDS awareness' [or] 'There'll be no more child abuse thanks to this fine show you did.' The argument is you can only do influence for good; you can't influence for ill. That makes no sense at all.”

Pat Sajak (1946) American television host

Attributed to Pat Sajak, in: Bloom: A Girl's Guide to Growing Up, (2003), p. 171
2000s

People, Sense

“(J. L. Austin's) admirers claim that his supreme preoccupation was truth. His work, with its sad conjunction of extraordinary cunning in presentation with very thin content, leaves rather the impression of a man who had little sense of real problems but who liked winning arguments and dominating people in the course of them, and who was well equipped to gratify his taste. He was the supreme dialectical poker player, unsurpassed at making people believe that their bluff had been called when in fact they weren’t bluffing, and at stone-walling any attempt to call his own. It would be hypocritical not to say all this. Hypocrisy might not matter, but it would also be unfair to those students who are still conned into supposing that this kind of philosophizing has much in common with serious intellecual endeavour.”

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist

Poker Player (1969), reprinted in The Devil in Modern Philosophy (1974)

People, Truth, Sadness, Problem

“I just want them to know that it happened for a reason.”
“Look, Tyler, some things just happen.” This close, the stillness of the ghost plane was overwhelming.
“But why did they die instead of us?” the boy asked, with an air of patiently reciting a well-rehearsed argument. His gaze was unblinking.
“Because they were exposed to a certain virus, and we weren’t. You can look for reasons, and god knows a few people here have driven themselves half-crazy trying, but Tyler, that’s all there is.”
“What if we were saved for a different reason?”
“Saved?” Clark was remembering why he didn’t talk to Tyler very often.
“Some people were saved. People like us.”
“What do you mean, ‘people like us’?”
“People who were good,” Tyler said.”People who weren’t weak.”

Emily St. John Mandel book Station Eleven

“Look, it’s not a question of having been bad or...the people in there, in the Air Gradia jet, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Source: Station Eleven (2014), Chapter 44 (pp. 259-260)

God, People, Boy, Question

“Men are like that, they can resist sound argument, yet yield to a glance.”

Honoré de Balzac book Le Contrat de mariage

Les hommes sont ainsi faits, ils résistent à une discussion sérieuse et tombent sous un regard. "Le Contrat de mariage," http://books.google.com/books?id=3ihgAAAAcAAJ&q=%22Les+hommes+sont+ainsi+faits+ils+r%C3%A9sistent+%C3%A0+une+discussion+s%C3%A9rieuse+et+tombent+sous%22+%22regard%22&pg=PA78#v=onepage Scènes de la vie privée (1835)

Men

“The problem with ideology is, if you've got an ideology, you've already got your mind made up. You know all the answers and that makes evidence irrelevant and arguments a waste of time. You tend to govern by assertion and attacks.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

At an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress, October 18, 2006[citation needed]
2000s

Problem, Time

“He marvelled again at the effect of projection: how hostile Henry had seemed to him when Patrick was hostile towards everyone; how considerate he seemed now that Patrick had no argument with him. What would it be like to stop projecting? Was it possible at all?”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

At Last, Chapter 2

Hostility

“"They say that a military confrontation with Iran would undermine the efforts already underway, that it would be ineffective, and that it would provoke even more vindictive action by Iran. I've heard these arguments before. In fact, I've read them before. In my desk, I have copies of an exchange of letters between the World Jewish Congress and the US War Department. The year was 1944. The World Jewish Congress implored the American government to bomb Auschwitz. The reply came five days later. I want to read it to you: “Such an operation could be executed only by diverting considerable air support essential to the success of our forces elsewhere… and in any case would be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources”… And here's the most remarkable sentence of all. And I quote: “Such an effort might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.” Think about that – “even more vindictive action””

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

than the Holocaust." Speech at AIPAC Policy Conference in March 2012 http://www.aipac.org/pc/videos/2012/monday-gala-plenary/prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu 2010s, 2012

War, World, Quotes, Support

“One of the most depressing things about educated people today is that so few of them, even among professional intellectuals, are able to follow the steps of a simple logical argument.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

The Storm Over the University (December 6, 1990)
Context: You need to know enough philosophy so that the methods of logical analysis are available to you to be used as a tool. One of the most depressing things about educated people today is that so few of them, even among professional intellectuals, are able to follow the steps of a simple logical argument.

People, Education

“No! 'tis the present world that prompts the song,
The world we see, the world that feels the wrong,
The world of men, whose arguments ye know,
Of men, long curb'd to servitude and wo,
Men, rous'd from sloth, by indignation stung,
Their strong hands loos'd, and found their fearless tongue;
Whose voice of fire, whose deep-descending steel
Shall speak to souls, and teach dull nerves to feel.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)
Context: Think not, ye knaves, whom meanness styles the Great,
Drones of the Church and harpies of the State, —
Ye, whose curst sires, for blood and plunder fam'd,
Sultans or kings or czars or emp'rors nam'd,
Taught the deluded world their claims to own,
And raise the crested reptiles to a throne, —
Ye, who pretend to your dark host was given
The lamp of life, the mystic keys of heaven;
Whose impious arts with magic spells began
When shades of ign'rance veil'd the race of man;
Who change, from age to age, the sly deceit
As Science beams, and Virtue learns the cheat;
Tyrants of double powers, the soul that blind,
To rob, to scourge, and brutalize mankind,
Think not I come to croak with omen'd yell
The dire damnations of your future hell,
To bend a bigot or reform a knave,
By op'ning all the scenes beyond the grave.
I know your crusted souls: while one defies
In sceptic scorn the vengeance of the skies,
The other boasts, — “I ken thee, Power divine,
“But fear thee not; th' avenging bolt is mine." No! 'tis the present world that prompts the song,
The world we see, the world that feels the wrong,
The world of men, whose arguments ye know,
Of men, long curb'd to servitude and wo,
Men, rous'd from sloth, by indignation stung,
Their strong hands loos'd, and found their fearless tongue;
Whose voice of fire, whose deep-descending steel
Shall speak to souls, and teach dull nerves to feel.

Men, World, Feeling, Soul

“It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.

Aphorism 24

Nature, Time

“There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

Liberty vs Socialism
Context: There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another. If that person is too resolute in his refusal to do so, what is the case for imposing fines, imprisonment or death? You say, "Death! Aren't you exaggerating, Williams?" Say he tells the agents of Congress that he'll pay his share of the constitutionally mandated functions of government but refuse to pay the health costs of a sick obese person or a cyclist who becomes a vegetable, what do you think the likely course of events will be? First, he'd be threatened with fines, imprisonment or property confiscation. Refusal to give in to these government sanctions would ultimately lead to his being shot by the agents of Congress.

Personality

“We have a big argument here about whether Nicaragua and Cuba are sending arms to El Salvador.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s, Talk at University of California, Berkeley, 1984
Context: We have a big argument here about whether Nicaragua and Cuba are sending arms to El Salvador. Well, I don't know, so far there's no evidence that they are, but that's not really the interesting question. I mean, you gotta watch the way questions are framed by the propaganda system. The way it's framed is, the doves say they're not sending arms, and the hawks say they are sending arms. But the real question, which is being suppressed in all of this, is, "Should they be sending arms?" And the answer is of course, "Yes." [applause] Everybody should be sending arms. You see, that question is not raised, just as if somebody was talking in, say, the Soviet Union, and the question came up: "Should somebody send arms to Afghan rebels?" Well, of course not. You know, that's terrorism or something like that. The point is that it's perfectly legitimate to send arms to people who finally try to use violence in self-defense against a gang of mass murderers installed by a foreign power. Of course it's legitimate to send them arms.

“You see that I have set out opposing assertions in response to your question and I have touched on quite strong arguments in support of each position. Therefore consider now which seems the more probable to you.”

William of Ockham (1285–1349) medieval philosopher and theologian

Vol. I, Book 1, Ch. 2.
Dialogus (1494)
Context: The Holy Spirit through blessed John the evangelist makes a terrible threat against those who add anything to or take anything from divine scripture when he says in the last chapter of Revelations [22:18–9], "If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues which are in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book." We clearly gather from all these that nothing should be added to sacred scripture nor anything removed from it. To decide by way of teaching, therefore, which assertion should be considered catholic, which heretical, chiefly pertains to theologians, the experts on divine scripture.
You see that I have set out opposing assertions in response to your question and I have touched on quite strong arguments in support of each position. Therefore consider now which seems the more probable to you.

Question, Support, Strong

“Like such titles as Christian and Quaker, "anarchist" was in the end proudly adopted by one of those against whom it had been used in condemnation. In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, that stormy, argumentative individualist who prided himself on being a man of paradox and a provoker of contradiction, published the work that established him as a pioneer libertarian thinker. It was What Is Property?, in which he gave his own question the celebrated answer: "Property is theft." In the same book he became the first man willingly to claim the title of anarchist.
Undoubtedly Proudhon did this partly in defiance, and partly in order to exploit the word's paradoxical qualities. He had recognized the ambiguity of the Greek anarchos, and had gone back to it for that very reason — to emphasize that the criticism of authority on which he was about to embark need not necessarily imply an advocacy of disorder. The passages in which he introduces "anarchist" and "anarchy" are historically important enough to merit quotation, since they not merely show these words being used for the first time in a socially positive sense, but also contain in germ the justification by natural law which anarchists have in general applied to their arguments for a non-authoritarian society.
What is to be the form of government in the future? … I hear some of my readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question? You — are a republican." A republican! Yes, but that word specifies nothing. Res publico; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs — no matter under what form of government, may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans. "Well, you are a democrat." No … "Then what are you?"”

George Woodcock (1912–1995) Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic

I am an anarchist!
Prologue
Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)

Books, Law, Question, Nature

“In the first place, let us admit that the first ten years of the League were in a sense unnatural. The horror of war to which I have already alluded was necessarily far more vivid than it can be expected long to remain. That tremendous argument for peace, the horror of war, was a diminishing asset. Most of us, at that time, were, I think, quite well aware that unless we could get the international system into solidly effective working order in the first ten years, we were likely to have great difficulties in the succeeding period, and so it has proved.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)
Context: We see the world as it is now, after these defeats of the League, and we can compare it with what it was six or seven years ago. The comparison is certainly depressing; the contrast is terrible. And we have not yet reached a time when we can estimate the full material losses and human suffering which have been the direct result of the ambitions of one set of powers and the weakness of the others. Nor is there any purpose in attempting to do so. Let us, rather, examine where we now stand and what steps we ought to take in order to strengthen the international system and thrust back again the forces of reaction.
In the first place, let us admit that the first ten years of the League were in a sense unnatural. The horror of war to which I have already alluded was necessarily far more vivid than it can be expected long to remain. That tremendous argument for peace, the horror of war, was a diminishing asset. Most of us, at that time, were, I think, quite well aware that unless we could get the international system into solidly effective working order in the first ten years, we were likely to have great difficulties in the succeeding period, and so it has proved.

War, Peace, Thinking, Sense

“He was not anti-Christ: nobody had heard of such a power of darkness then; but he was startlingly anti-Moses. He was against the priests, against the judiciary, against the military, against the city (he declared that it was impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven), against all the interests, classes, principalities and powers, inviting everybody to abandon all these and follow him. By every argument, legal, political, religious, customary, and polite, he was the most complete enemy of the society of his time ever brought to the bar.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Preface, Leading Case of Jesus Christ
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)
Context: I dislike cruelty, even cruelty to other people, and should therefore like to see all cruel people exterminated. But I should recoil with horror from a proposal to punish them. Let me illustrate my attitude by a very famous, indeed far too famous, example of the popular conception of criminal law as a means of delivering up victims to the normal popular lust for cruelty which has been mortified by the restraint imposed on it by civilization. Take the case of the extermination of Jesus Christ. No doubt there was a strong case for it. Jesus was from the point of view of the High Priest a heretic and an impostor. From the point of view of the merchants he was a rioter and a Communist. From the Roman Imperialist point of view he was a traitor. From the commonsense point of view he was a dangerous madman. From the snobbish point of view, always a very influential one, he was a penniless vagrant. From the police point of view he was an obstructor of thoroughfares, a beggar, an associate of prostitutes, an apologist of sinners, and a disparager of judges; and his daily companions were tramps whom he had seduced into vagabondage from their regular trades. From the point of view of the pious he was a Sabbath breaker, a denier of the efficacy of circumcision and the advocate of a strange rite of baptism, a gluttonous man and a winebibber. He was abhorrent to the medical profession as an unqualified practitioner who healed people by quackery and charged nothing for the treatment. He was not anti-Christ: nobody had heard of such a power of darkness then; but he was startlingly anti-Moses. He was against the priests, against the judiciary, against the military, against the city (he declared that it was impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven), against all the interests, classes, principalities and powers, inviting everybody to abandon all these and follow him. By every argument, legal, political, religious, customary, and polite, he was the most complete enemy of the society of his time ever brought to the bar. He was guilty on every count of the indictment, and on many more that his accusers had not the wit to frame. If he was innocent then the whole world was guilty. To acquit him was to throw over civilization and all its institutions. History has borne out the case against him; for no State has ever constituted itself on his principles or made it possible to live according to his commandments: those States who have taken his name have taken it as an alias to enable them to persecute his followers more plausibly.
It is not surprising that under these circumstances, and in the absence of any defence, the Jerusalem community and the Roman government decided to exterminate Jesus. They had just as much right to do so as to exterminate the two thieves who perished with him.

Time, Christ

“The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek.”

Karl Popper book The Open Society and Its Enemies

Vol. 1, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4
The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
Context: The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Sense, Freedom

“Among the thoughtful men of every creed and country there is a note of spiritual wistfulness and expectancy.
If we leave aside the fanatics with whom no argument is possible, the leaders of every historical civilization to-day are convinced that mankind in all its extent and history is a single organism, worshipful in its growing majesty and capable of a capable of a progress upon which none dare set any bounds.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
Context: While the triumph of mechanical inventions provides a common basis for the civilization of the future, the break-down of traditional systems of thought, belief, and practice is the necessary preparation for the building of a spiritual unity. The leaven is at work among all the peoples, especially among the youth who are unwilling to be mere clay in the hands of others, be they ever so old or wise. There is a quickened consciousness, a sense of something in adequate and unsatisfactory in the ideas and conceptions we have held and the groping after new values. Dissolution is in the air. The old forms of faith are tottering. Among the thoughtful men of every creed and country there is a note of spiritual wistfulness and expectancy.
If we leave aside the fanatics with whom no argument is possible, the leaders of every historical civilization to-day are convinced that mankind in all its extent and history is a single organism, worshipful in its growing majesty and capable of a capable of a progress upon which none dare set any bounds. Dante proclaimed: "There is not one goal for this civilization and one for that, but for the civilization of all mankind there is a single goal." If there is a single goal for all civilization, it does not mean that all shall speak a common tongue or profess a common creed, or that all shall live under a single government, or all shall follow an unchanging pattern in customs and manners.

Men, History, Country

“The fact that men are naturally quarrelsome is presumed to be an argument against such institutions as the League. But it is precisely the fact of the natural pugnacity of man that makes such institutions necessary.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)
Context: The fact that men are naturally quarrelsome is presumed to be an argument against such institutions as the League. But it is precisely the fact of the natural pugnacity of man that makes such institutions necessary. If men were naturally and easily capable of being their own judges, always able to see the other's case, never got into panics, never lost their heads, never lost their tempers and called it patriotism — why, then we should not want a League. But neither should we want in that case most of our national apparatus of government either — parliaments, congresses, courts, police, ten commandments. These are all means by which we deal with the unruly element in human nature.

Men, Nature

“My argument against the dissolution of the American Union is this. It would place the slave system more exclusively under the control of the slave-holding states, and withdraw it from the power in the northern states which is opposed to slavery. Slavery is essentially barbarous in its character. It, above all things else, dreads the presence of an advanced civilization. It flourishes best where it meets no reproving frowns, and hears no condemning voices. While in the Union it will meet with both. Its hope of life, in the last resort, is to get out of the Union. I am, therefore, for drawing the bond of the Union more completely under the power of the free states. What they most dread, that I most desire”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)
Context: My argument against the dissolution of the American Union is this. It would place the slave system more exclusively under the control of the slave-holding states, and withdraw it from the power in the northern states which is opposed to slavery. Slavery is essentially barbarous in its character. It, above all things else, dreads the presence of an advanced civilization. It flourishes best where it meets no reproving frowns, and hears no condemning voices. While in the Union it will meet with both. Its hope of life, in the last resort, is to get out of the Union. I am, therefore, for drawing the bond of the Union more completely under the power of the free states. What they most dread, that I most desire. I have much confidence in the instincts of the slaveholders. They see that the Constitution will afford slavery no protection when it shall cease to be administered by slaveholders. They see, moreover, that if there is once a will in the people of America to abolish slavery, this is no word, no syllable in the Constitution to forbid that result. They see that the Constitution has not saved slavery in Rhode Island, in Connecticut, in New York, or Pennsylvania; that the Free States have only added three to their original number. There were twelve Slave States at the beginning of the Government: there are fifteen now.

Life, Hope, Drawing

“The two of them joined together left me no answerable argument; their dream was a grand one but it was exactly that — a dream. They both lived to know this and I learned it from them, but it has not changed my love for them or my lifelong sympathy for the cause to which they devoted their lives — to ameliorate the anguish that human beings inflict on each other — the never-ending wrong, forever incurable.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
Context: Far away and long ago, I read Emma Goldman's story of her life, her first book in which she told the grim, deeply touching narrative of her young life during which she worked in a scrubby sweatshop making corsets by the bundle. At the same time, I was reading Prince Kropotkin's memoirs, his account of the long step he took from his early princely living to his membership in the union of the outcast, the poor, the depressed, and it was a most marvelous thing to have two splendid, courageous, really noble human beings speaking together, telling the same tale. It was like a duet of two great voices telling a tragic story. I believed in both of them at once. The two of them joined together left me no answerable argument; their dream was a grand one but it was exactly that — a dream. They both lived to know this and I learned it from them, but it has not changed my love for them or my lifelong sympathy for the cause to which they devoted their lives — to ameliorate the anguish that human beings inflict on each other — the never-ending wrong, forever incurable.

Love, Dreams, Learning, Change

“If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.”

Joseph C. Wilson (1949–2019) American ambassador

What I Didn't Find in Africa (2003)
Context: Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

War, Falseness

“Happily I had very early learned the fallacy of building much on logic and verbal argument.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: Happily I had very early learned the fallacy of building much on logic and verbal argument. Single sets of truths I knew to be as little conclusive in theology as in physics; and, in one as in the other, no theory to be worth anything, however plausibly backed up with Scripture texts or facts, which was not gathered bona fide from the analysis of all the attainable phenomena, and verified wherever possible by experiment.
"Here is a theory of the world which you bring for my acceptance: well, there is the world; try — will the key fit? can you read the language into sense by it?" was the only method; and so I was led always to look at broad results, at pages and chapters, rather than at single words and sentences, where for a few lines a false key may serve to make a meaning. So of these broad observations I only expected a broad solution.

Learning

“Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

Lila (1991)
Context: Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, woolly-headed, crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is not a judgment about an experience. It is not a description of experience. The value itself is an experience. As such it is completely predictable. It is verifiable by anyone who cares to do so. It is reproducible.

Personality

“And, frankly, for the sake of the argument, let us call him a fool; — then had I rather be a fool than a wise man. —I love all men who dive.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Letter to Evert Augustus Duyckinck (3 March 1849); published in The Letters of Herman Melville (1960) edited by Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman, p. 78; a portion of this is sometimes modernized in two ways:
Context: I do not oscillate in Emerson's rainbow, but prefer rather to hang myself in mine own halter than swing in any other man's swing. Yet I think Emerson is more than a brilliant fellow. Be his stuff begged, borrowed, or stolen, or of his own domestic manufacture he is an uncommon man. Swear he is a humbug — then is he no common humbug. Lay it down that had not Sir Thomas Browne lived, Emerson would not have mystified — I will answer, that had not Old Zack's father begot him, old Zack would never have been the hero of Palo Alto. The truth is that we are all sons, grandsons, or nephews or great-nephews of those who go before us. No one is his own sire. — I was very agreeably disappointed in Mr Emerson. I had heard of him as full of transcendentalisms, myths & oracular gibberish; I had only glanced at a book of his once in Putnam's store — that was all I knew of him, till I heard him lecture. — To my surprise, I found him quite intelligible, tho' to say truth, they told me that that night he was unusually plain. — Now, there is a something about every man elevated above mediocrity, which is, for the most part, instinctuly perceptible. This I see in Mr Emerson. And, frankly, for the sake of the argument, let us call him a fool; — then had I rather be a fool than a wise man. —I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; & if he don't attain the bottom, why, all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plumet that will. I'm not talking of Mr Emerson now — but of the whole corps of thought-divers, that have been diving & coming up again with bloodshot eyes since the world began.
I could readily see in Emerson, notwithstanding his merit, a gaping flaw. It was, the insinuation, that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions. These men are all cracked right across the brow. And never will the pullers-down be able to cope with the builders-up. And this pulling down is easy enough — a keg of powder blew up Block's Monument — but the man who applied the match, could not, alone, build such a pile to save his soul from the shark-maw of the Devil. But enough of this Plato who talks thro' his nose.

Love, Men, Fools

Quotes about argument page 12

Quotes about argument
page 12