Quotes about argument
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“The real reason Charles Darwin distresses people, I would argue, is not that he stumbled on an argument against theism. No, the problem was that he replaced theism—replaced it with a construct more beautiful and majestic than any account of the Supreme Being outside the Book of Job, a construct that invites us to see every variety of life, from aphids to archbishops, zygotes to zoologists, as vibrant threads in an epic tapestry, its warp and woof stretching across the eons and back to the Precambrian ooze, the seminal sea-vents, the primordial clay-pits, or wherever it all began. An astonishing construct, a mind-boggling construct, a construct of which Jehovah is understandably and insanely jealous.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 17 (p. 401)

Life, People, Books, Beauty

“Around 1958, I became aware of H. A. Simon's seminal papers on bounded rationality and was immediately convinced by his arguments. I tried to construct a theory of boundedly rational multigoal decision making. Together with Heinz Sauermann, I worked out an "aspiration adaptation theory of the firm" which was published as a journal article in 1962… More and more I came to the conclusion that purely speculative approaches like that of our paper of 1962 are of limited value. The structure of boundedly rational economic behavior cannot be invented in the armchair, it must be explored experimentally.”

Reinhard Selten (1930–2016) German economist

"Reinhard Selten - Biographical," 1994

Behavior, Decision

“It is probably best to start off by noting that Hayek knew a lot about Mill, probably for a time more than any other contemporary scholar. So we should not underestimate him.
Next, what he had to say about Mill, what portion of Mill’s work he drew upon, was very much dictated by the sort of project he was working on. When he was making an argument about how the British liberal tradition lost its bearings, or about how Comtean positivism came to be known and gained influence across Europe, Mill was classed among the perpetrators. When he was writing about what made the British liberal tradition great, Mill could be one of the heroes. There is, I think, no inconsistency in the fact that Hayek could hold both views simultaneously.”

Bruce Caldwell (economist) (1952) economic historian

"Hayek and Mill", History of Political Economy (2008)

Thinking, Time

“The only real argument for monolithic systems was performance, and there is now enough evidence showing that microkernel systems can be just as fast as monolithic systems.”

Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1944) Dutch computer scientist

In a Usenet message, 29 Jan 1992.
The "Linux is Obsolete" Debate

“After centuries of relative silence and enforced acceptance, we adapted a technique of exposing the problem by direct and dramatic methods. We had confidence that when we awakened the nation to the immorality and evil of inequality, there would be an upsurge of conscience followed by remedial action. We knew that there were solutions and that the majority of the nation were ready for them. Yet we also knew that the existence of solutions would not automatically operate to alter conditions. We had to organize, not only arguments, but people in the millions for action. Finally we had to be prepared to accept all the consequences involved in dramatizing our grievances in the unique style we had devised.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

People, Confidence, Problem, Silence

“Nothing is more remarkable in the Bible than the absence of argument…Argument is internal continuity. So is logical sequence in narrative: in the Bible the connectives are just "and."”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 200

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Footnote - The very remarkable speeches of Mr. Garfield, afterward President of the United States, which had so great an influence on the settlement of the inflation question throughout the Union, were on the main lines laid down in Turgot's letter
Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 171

Fear, Time, Country

“She was one of those who could talk and talk and talk. Gair listened to her harsh voice - "Just like a duck," Ayna described it - and hoped she would lose the argument. But Adara once said Kasta had never lost an argument in her life. She just talked everyone insensible.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Power of Three

Source: Power of Three (1976), p. 108.

Life, Hope

“Speaking generally, I am desirous to push forward the argument from the interests of the people more than has hitherto been done. As I have said, I consider it to be our true rule and measure of action, and our observance of it is the one justification for our presence in India.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Letter to Lord Northbrook (25 August 1875), quoted in S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858-1905 (Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 65

People

“But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress.Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VIII: "Religion", pages 308-309 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=326&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image Francis Darwin calls these "extracts, somewhat abbreviated, from a part of the Autobiography, written in 1876". The original version is presented below. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887) Variant: p>But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;—I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.And this is a damnable doctrine.Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.</p

Life, God, Books, Law

“I assume people with bad arguments will just lose them.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC (June 5, 2009)

People

“The conventional model for explaining the uniqueness of American democracy is its division between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It was the great contribution of Frank J. Goodnow to codify a less obvious, but no less profound element: the distinction between politics and policies, principles and operations. He showed how the United States went beyond a nation based on government by gentlemen and then one based on the spoils system brought about by the Jacksonian revolt against the Eastern Establishment, into a government that separated political officials from civil administrators.
Goodnow contends that the civil service reformers persuasively argued that the separation of administration from politics, far from destroying the democratic links with the people, actually served to enhance democracy. While John Rohr, in his outstanding new introduction carefully notes loopholes in the theoretical scaffold of Goodnow's argument, he is also careful to express his appreciation of the pragmatic ground for this new sense of government as needing a partnership of the elected and the appointed.
Goodnow was profoundly influenced by European currents, especially the Hegelian. As a result, the work aims at a political philosophy meant to move considerably beyond the purely pragmatic needs of government. For it was the relationships, the need for national unity in a country that was devised to account for and accommodate pluralism and diversity, that attracted Goodnow's legal background and normative impulses alike. That issues of legitimacy and power distribution were never entirely resolved by Goodnow does not alter the fact that this is perhaps the most important work, along with that of James Bryce, to emerge from this formative period to connect processes of governance with systems of democracy.”

Frank Johnson Goodnow (1859–1939) American historian

Abstract, 2009 edition:
Politics and Administration (1900)

People, Democracy, Sense, Partnership

“If, in spite of the fact that all these attributes have been faithfully handed down unaltered for hundreds of generations, we are to believe that, in the course of time, they have all diverged from one common stock, how shall we resist the arguments of the transmutationist, who contends that all closely allied species of animals and plants have in like manner sprung from a common parentage, albeit that for the last three or four thousand years they may have been persistent in character?”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.20, p. 387-388

Time, Animals

“We have confused the real issue of parliamentary democracy, for already there has been a fundamental change. The power of electors over their law-makers has gone, the power of MPs over Ministers has gone, the role of Ministers has changed. The real case for entry has never been spelled out, which is that there should be a fully federal Europe in which we become a province. It hasn't been spelled out because people would never accept it. We are at the moment on a federal escalator, moving as we talk, going towards a federal objective we do not wish to reach. In practice, Britain will be governed by a European coalition government that we cannot change, dedicated to a capitalist or market economy theology. This policy is to be sold to us by projecting an unjustified optimism about the Community, and an unjustified pessimism about the United Kingdom, designed to frighten us in. Jim quoted Benjamin Franklin, so let me do the same: "He who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary security deserves neither safety nor liberty." The Common Market will break up the UK because there will be no valid argument against an independent Scotland, with its own Ministers and Commissioner, enjoying Common Market membership. We shall be choosing between the unity of the UK and the unity of the EEC. It will impose appalling strains on the Labour movement… I believe that we want independence and democratic self-government, and I hope the Cabinet in due course will think again.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech given in the Cabinet meeting to discuss Britain's membership of the EEC, as recorded in his diary (18 March 1975), Against the Tide. Diaries 1973-1976 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), pp. 346-347.
1970s

People, Law, Hope, Quotes

“There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have the right to vote.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

Problem

“"You've never heard of Paul Revere?" "No." "Lucky man, Sharpe. He called my father a traitor, and our family called Revere a traitor, and I rather think we lost the argument."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Thomas Leroy, and Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 81
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Company (1982)

Family, Thinking

“I may have vetoed more legislation than the other forty-nine governors in the country combined. And it wasn't just saying, "no," it was really looking at what we were spending our money on and what we were getting for the money we were spending. And I really do believe in smaller government, I really believe that there are consequences of legislation that gets passed and maybe it isn't in our best interest to pass all the legislation that we pass, that it layers bureaucracy on transactions that aren't made any safer by you and I, but that just end up making it so much more cumbersome, so much more burdensome, and ends up adding a lot of money as opposed to the notion of liberty and freedom and the personal responsibility that goes along with that… My entire life I watched government spend more money than what it takes in and I just always thought that there would be a day of reckoning with regard to that spending, and I think that day of reckoning is here, that it's right now, and it needs to be fixed… But what I said then and I'll say now, I think that Republicans would gain a lot of credibility in this argument if Republicans would offer up a repeal of the Prescription Health Care Benefit that they passed when they had control of both houses of Congress and ran up record deficits.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Announcement of Intention to Run for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States
YouTube
2011-04-21
http://youtu.be/lBlA7yEiiZs
2012-02-24
Sound Government

Life, Money, Health, Thinking

“More generally (and this applies to Christianity no less than to Islam), what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that faith itself is a virtue. Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. Teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them - given certain other ingredients that are not hard to come by - to grow up into potentially lethal weapons for future jihads or crusades.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), pp. 347-348 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007

Children, Faith, Evil, Future

“But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.”

Isabel Paterson (1886–1961) author and editor

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 250, emphasis in the original

Death, People, Support, Personality

“I had long believed that the Heath aberration of authoritarian centralist corporatism apart, most of the values, ethos and policies of Conservatism were strongly supported by working-class voters. Those voters—especially the socio-economic groups C1 and C2—I saw as natural Conservatives who nevertheless saw themselves for tribal reasons as Labour voters. However much we tried to reach them by argument, we always failed because they were unable to identify themselves with the representatives of the Tory Party they saw. I was determined to be a Conservative who spoke their language, not just what is often described as my flat North-London accent—which was after all my mother tongue—but their practical realism, lack of humbug and strong attachment to many traditional standards and values.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

Norman Tebbit, Upwardly Mobile (Futura, 1991), p. 172.

Support, Nature, Strong

“The proper form of science is explanation and argument, and the proper form of religion and morality is exhortation and command; but that of art is simply the directest embodiment of its theme as the theme itself requires. Assured that the theme is compatible with the ideal nature of art, the artist knows that it will justify itself and work its own work, if it can only find expression in its natural embodiment.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.201-2

Religion, Art, Nature, Science

“The Basic Argument In its simplest form, the argument goes like this: when the tasks people perform are well understood, predictable, routine, and repetitive, a bureaucratic structure is the most efficient. Things can be "programmed," to use March and Simon's term. Where tasks are not well understood, generally because the 'raw material' that each person works on is poorly understood and possibly reactive, recalcitrant or self activating. the tasks are non-routine. Such units or organizations are difficult to bureaucratize.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, Complex organizations, 1972, p. 166

People, Personality

“If there's one thing the international community should do, if only out of deference because he won the election, is to take seriously his arguments that coca products have a place in the international commodities market.”

Ethan Nadelmann (1957) American writer; campaigner for the legalization of marijuana

On Evo Morales, the head of state of Bolivia, as found in the International Herald Tribune. http://web.archive.org/web/20060221235710/http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/12/news/bolivia.php The War on Drugs

Communication

“Employee participation cannot and will not be divorced from other human resource practices and organisational strategies. The implication of this argument is that we need to look at the total set of organisational strategies and assess their effects on performance.”

Thomas A. Kochan (1947) American academic

Source: The mutual gains enterprise, 1994, p. 64

“A metaphysical thesis of a particular school is usually rejected by a rival school which puts forward a (directly or indirectly) contradictory thesis. Jainism says that the lesson to be drawn from such age-old philosophic disputes is the following: Each school asserts its thesis and claims it to be the absolute truth, and thus it does not really wish to understand the point that is being made by the opposite side. The rival schools, by their arguments and counter arguments, only encourage dogmatism and intoleration in philosophy, This, according to the Jainas, is the evil of ekanta one-sided philosophies. But the philosophic propositions of rival schools could be integrated together under the Anekanta system.”

Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935–1991) Indian philosopher

Central Philosophy of Jainism (1981), p. 2

Truth, Age, School, Understanding

“Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.”

Edward Abbey book The Monkey Wrench Gang

The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

Soul

“Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

"Discussion on Making All Things Equal"; Variant: If right were really right, it would be so different from not-right that there would be no room for argument. If so were really so, then it would be so different from not-so that there would be no room for argument.

“I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the CROSS, the CROSS — God's hammer, God's fire.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 144.

Love, God, World, Parting

“I’m wondering whose side I ought to be on. I’m getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good Le Chiffre. The Devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don’t give the poor chap a chance. There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition.
‘So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 20 : The Nature Of Evil

Men, People, Books, Nature

“There is no mask that temptation cannot wear, and the idea that Satan is purely a logician is an illusion held by not a few naive people. Many a shifty old man sees him as an opponent in an academic argument, but if he does the observer is still at the stage of games and trifles. Sometimes, though not often, the black desire to harm wins out over quicker and less bitter delights. When that happens, evil shows itself for what it truly is, not a way of life, but an attack on life itself.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Source: L'imposture (The Impostor), 1927, pp.74–75

Life, People, Way, Game

“Truth frightens man. He plants illusion in the debris of his mind to hide him from the clean white light she brings. His arguments defeat her wisdom. In his preconceptions and prejudices he dictates, in advance, what form she must take, what garments she must wear; and because of this he often does not recognize her when they meet. His illusion drives her from him.
And yet he still yearns and seeks for truth.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 187.

Wisdom, Truth, Light

“We should engage with the new de facto power and help make the new government make the changes necessary, especially on the economy, so they can deliver for the people. The events that led to the Egyptian army's removal of President Mohamed Morsi confronted the military with a simple choice: intervention or chaos. Seventeen million people on the streets are not the same as an election. But it as an awesome manifestation of power. I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn't on its own mean effective government. Today efficacy is the challenge. This is a sort of free democratic spirit that operates outside the convention of democracy that elections decide the government. It is enormously fuelled by social media, itself a revolutionary phenomenon. And it moves very fast in precipitating crisis. It is not always consistent or rational. A protest is not a policy, or a placard a programme for government. But if governments don't have a clear argument with which to rebut the protest, they're in trouble.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/07/egypt-army-morsi-tony-blair 6 July, 2013 Blair justifying the Egyptians army actions on removing Morsi. 2010s

People, Democracy, Support, Strong

“The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Victory

“MR. PANSCOPE. (suddenly emerging from a deep reverie.) I have heard, with the most profound attention, everything which the gentleman on the other side of the table has thought proper to advance on the subject of human deterioration; and I must take the liberty to remark, that it augurs a very considerable degree of presumption in any individual, to set himself up against the authority of so many great men, as may be marshalled in metaphysical phalanx under the opposite banners of the controversy; such as Aristotle, Plato, the scholiast on Aristophanes, St Chrysostom, St Jerome, St Athanasius, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides, Gronovius, Hemsterhusius, Longinus, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Doctor Paley, the King of Prussia, the King of Poland, Cicero, Monsieur Gautier, Hippocrates, Machiavelli, Milton, Colley Cibber, Bojardo, Gregory Nazianzenus, Locke, D'Alembert, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Erasmus, Doctor Smollett, Zimmermann, Solomon, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Thomas-a-Kempis.
MR. ESCOT. I presume, sir, you are one of those who value an authority more than a reason.
MR. PANSCOPE. The authority, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable.
SQUIRE HEADLONG. Bravo! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made.
MR. ESCOT. It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible.
MR. PANSCOPE. I am not obliged, Sir, as Dr Johnson remarked on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding.
MR. ESCOT. I fear, Sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock.
MR. PANSCOPE. 'Sdeath, Sir, do you question my understanding?
MR. ESCOT. I only question, Sir, where I expect a reply, which from what manifestly has no existence, I am not visionary enough to anticipate.
MR. PANSCOPE. I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, that all your opinions are extremely absurd.
MR. ESCOT. I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd.
MR. PANSCOPE. Death and fury, Sir!
MR. ESCOT. Say no more, Sir - that apology is quite sufficient.
MR. PANSCOPE. Apology, Sir?
MR. ESCOT. Even so, Sir. You have lost your temper, which I consider equivalent to a confession that you have the worst of the argument.
MR. PANSCOPE. Lightnings and devils!”

Thomas Love Peacock book Headlong Hall

Headlong Hall, chapter V (1816).

Death, Men, Pain, Fear

“How could such industries as software, semiconductors, and computers have been so innovative despite historically weak patent protection? We argue that if innovation is both sequential and complementary—as it certainly has been in those industries—competition can increase firms’ future profits thus offsetting short-term dissipation of rents. A simple model also shows that in such a dynamic industry, patent protection may reduce overall innovation and social welfare. The natural experiment that occurred when patent protection was extended to software in the 1980's provides a test of this model. Standard arguments would predict that R&D intensity and productivity should have increased among patenting firms.”

Eric Maskin (1950) American Nobel laureate in economics

Bessen, James, and Eric Maskin. " Sequential innovation, patents, and imitation http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/comp/replies/appendix1_en.pdf." The RAND Journal of Economics, 40.4 (2009): p. 611.

Nature, Future

“It is true, likewise, that the English in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions, as mere old wives' fables. I am sorry for it; and I willingly take this opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent compliment which so many that believe the Bible pay to those who do not believe it. I owe them no such service. I take knowledge these are at the bottom of the outcry which has been raised, and with such insolence spread throughout the nation, in direct opposition not only to the Bible, but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in all ages and nations. They well know (whether Christians know it or not), that the giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible; and they know, on the other hand, that if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air (Deism, Atheism, Materialism) falls to the ground. I know no reason, therefore, why we should suffer even this weapon to be wrested out of our hands. Indeed there are numerous arguments besides, which abundantly confute their vain imaginations. But we need not be hooted out of one; neither reason nor religion require this.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Nehemiah Curnock, ed., 'The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M.', London, Charles H. Kelly, vol. 5, p. 265 https://archive.org/stream/a613690405wesluoft#page/265/mode/1up (entry of 25 May 1768) General sources

Men, Age, Religion, Imagination

“A new danger now beset him [Grotius],—the danger of becoming simply a venal pleader, a creature who grinds out arguments on this or that side, for this or that client:—a mere legal beast of prey. Fortunately for himself and for the world he took a higher view of his life-work: his determination clearly was to make himself a thoroughly equipped jurist, and then, as he rose more and more in his profession, to use his powers for the good of his country and of mankind.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 59

Life, World, Country

“That God is quoted verbatim, that God is said to be speaking (when, in fact, he is being spoken for) points to either the remarkable arrogance of the biblical contributors or their unshakeable conviction that their access to the deity was total.
The fateful, and perhaps even unwitting, manipulation performed by the Hebrew Bible is to have convinced its readers that what stands in front of them is not a hodgepodge of texts worked over by countless men position across time and motivated by mundane political and theological interests. Instead, it presents itself as a self-evident treasury of the actual words, though, actions, political opinions, and future aspirations of Yahweh. From early on, apparently, interpreters wholly swallowed this argument.”

Jacques Berlinerblau (1966) Associate Professor, Director of the Program for Jewish Civilization, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,…

Source: The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (2005), p. 65

Men, God, Fate, Quotes

“Death is hard to keep in mind when there is work to be done. … Work does not by its nature permit us to do anything other than take it too seriously. It must destroy our sense of perspective, and we should be grateful to it for precisely this reason, for allowing us to mingle ourselves promiscuously with events, for letting us wear thoughts of our own death and the destruction of our enterprises with beautiful lightness, as mere intellectual propositions. … We function of the basis of a necessary myopia. Therein is the sheer energy of existence, a blind will no less impressive than that which we find in a moth arduously crossing a window ledge, … refusing to contemplate the broader scheme in which he will be dead by nightfall. The arguments for our triviality and vulnerability are too obvious, too well known and tedious to rehearse. What is interesting is that we may take it upon ourselves to approach tasks with utter determination and gravity even when their wider non-sense is clear. The impulse to exaggerate the significance of what we are doing, far from being an intellectual error, is really life itself coursing through us.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 324.

Life, Death, Beauty, Error

“If Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God in the experience of those who trust and love Him, there needs no further argument of His divinity.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 58

Love, Wisdom, God, Christ

“In Swami Dayananda's view, the term Arya was not coterminous with the term Hindu. The classical meaning of the word Arya is 'noble'. It is used as an honorific term of address, used in addressing the honoured ones in ancient Indian parlance. The term Hindu is reluctantly accepted as a descriptive term for the contemporary Hindu society and all its varied beliefs and practices, while the term Arya is normative and designates Hinduism as it ought to be…. Elsewhere in Hindu society, 'Arya' was and is considered a synonym for 'Hindu', except that it may be broader, viz. by unambiguously including Buddhism and Jainism. Thus, the Constitution of the 'independent, indivisible and sovereign monarchical Hindu kingdom' (Art.3:1) of Nepal take care to include the Buddhist minority by ordaining the king to uphold 'Aryan culture and Hindu religion' (Art.20: 1)…. The Arya Samaj's misgivings about the term Hindu already arose in tempore non suspecto, long before it became a dirty Word under Jawaharlal Nehru and a cause of legal disadvantage under the 1950 Constitution. Swami Dayananda Saraswati rightly objected that the term had been given by foreigners (who, moreover, gave all kinds of derogatory meanings to it) and considered that dependence on an exonym is a bit sub-standard for a highly literate and self-expressive civilization. This argument retains a certain validity: the self-identification of Hindus as 'Hindu' can never be more than a second-best option. On the other hand, it is the most practical choice in the short run, and most Hindus don't seem to pine for an alternative.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

Religion, Art, Dependency

“The Shah's vision of the ideal form of government was not so far removed from that of Mossadeq. In that ideal model one man, the king, prime minister or Pishva [Führer] would act as the guardian of the nation's highest interests. The Pishva, because he loves his people, could never do anything that might not be good for the people and the country. He might sacrifice the interests of the few for the benefit of the many. But he would never harm 'the people' or 'the nation' as a whole. Mossadeq's version of the same model envisaged a role for crowds, political groups - though not for political parties - and religious associations whose task was to support the Pishva by fighting his opponents and making him feel loved and cherished. In the Shah's model, the Pishva's decisions were to be carried out exclusively through the bureaucracy with the armed forces always ready to crush any opposition. All that was left for 'the nation' to do was applaud the Pishva and make him feel good. Mossadeq and the Shah advanced exactly the same argument in defence of their respective models: Iran, being constantly prey to the devilish appetite of the rapacious foreign powers, the influence of the ajnabi (foreigners), multiplying the centres of political power would allow the ajnabi to infiltrate the nation's structures. Neither man could invisage a situation in which different sections of the Iranian society might, for reasons of their own, oppose the Leader. They could conceive of no circumstances in which an opposition movement could emerge without foreign backing and intrigue.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Love, People, Feeling, Support

“It's obviously a tremendous loss for the state …. I think Livingston's stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess.”

David Vitter (1961) U.S. Senator from Louisiana

In May 1999, Vitter replaced Congressman Bob Livingston after Livingston resigned due to an adultery scandal.
[Konigsmark, Anne Rochell, A Week Of Crisis Impeachment: The Speakership Livingston's Constituents Decision to resign jolts home district, D4, The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, December 20, 1998, http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=0EADA4168D35692C, 2007-07-10]

Thinking, Loss

“What is needed is scientific analysis and convincing argument. Dogmatic criticism settles nothing. We are against poisonous weeds of all kinds, but we must carefully distinguish between what is really a poisonous weed and what is really a fragrant flower. Together with the masses of the people, we must learn to differentiate carefully between the two and to use correct methods to fight the poisonous weeds.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

VII: On "Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Content" and "Long Term Coexistence and Mutual Supervision"
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People

People, Flowers, Learning, Fight

“This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. In the legislative arena, especially when the country is closely divided, compromises tend to be the rule the day. But when judges rule this or that policy unconstitutional, there’s little room for compromise: One side must win, the other must lose. In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs — real-world laboratories in which ideas can be assessed on the results they produce — are not possible. Ideas are tested only in the abstract world of legal briefs and lawyers arguments. As a society, we lose the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide.”

Neil Gorsuch (1967) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Liberals’N’Lawsuits http://www.nationalreview.com/article/213590/liberalsnlawsuits-joseph-6 (February 7, 2005)

World, Idea, Country

“One thing which they ought to do, in order to hold their own against this enemy, is to give up cultivating what they call 'race pride', a sentiment too much like that which is 'the lion in the way' of our progress… Do we not know that every argument we make, and every pretension we set up in favor of race pride, is giving the enemy a stick to break our own heads? … You will, perhaps, think this criticism uncalled for. My answer is that truth is never uncalled for… In some of our colored public journals I have seen myself charged with a lack of race pride. I am not ashamed of that charge. I have no apology or vindication to offer. If fifty years of uncompromising devotion to the cause of the colored man in this country does not vindicate me, I am content to live without vindication. While I have no more reason to be proud of one race than another, I dare to say, and I fear no contradiction, that there is no other man in the United States prouder than myself of any great achievement, mental or mechanical, of which any colored man or woman is the author. This not because I am a colored man, but because I am a man; and because color is a misfortune, and is treated as a crime by the American people.”

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

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

People, Truth, Fear, Color

“Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.” You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant—but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"Bulverism" (1941)

Fools, Error, Thinking, Chance

“Well, I probably won't get too good grades even without you: I had an argument (completely unrelated – not even pertaining to OS's) with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn :)”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

1990s, 1991-94

Learning, Universe, Personality

“In 1663 Spinoza published the only work to which he ever set his name… He had prepared a summary of the second part of Descartes' 'Principles of Philosophy' for the use of a pupil… Certain of Spinoza's friends became curious about this manual and desired him to treat the first part of Descartes' work also in the same manner. This was done within a fortnight and Spinoza was then urged to publish the book, which he readily agreed to do upon condition that one of his friends would revise the language and write a preface explaining that the author did not agree with all the Cartesian doctrine… The contents… [included] an appendix of 'Metaphysical Reflections,' professedly written from a Cartesian point of view, but often giving significant hints of the author's real divergence from Descartes….'On this opportunity,' he writes to Oldenburg, 'we may find some persons holding the highest places in my country… who will be anxious to see those other writings which I acknowledge for my own, and will therefore take such order that I can give them to the world without danger of any inconvenience. If it so happens, I doubt not that I shall soon publish something; if not, I will rather hold my peace than thrust my opinions upon men against the will of my country and make enemies of them.'… The book on Descartes excited considerable attention and interest, but the untoward course of public events in succeeding years was unfavourable to a liberal policy, and deprived Spinoza of the support for which he had looked….
If Spinoza had ever been a disciple of Descartes, he had completely ceased to be so… He did not suppose the geometrical form of statement and argument to be an infallible method of arriving at philosophical truth; for in this work he made use of it to set forth opinions with which he himself did not agree, and proofs with which he was not satisfied. We do not know to what extent Spinoza's manual was accepted or taken into use by Cartesians, but its accuracy as an exposition of Descartes is beyond question. One of the many perverse criticisms made on Spinoza by modern writers is that he did not understand the fundamental proposition cogito ergo sum. In fact he gives precisely the same explanation of it that is given by Descartes himself in the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

p, 125
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880)

Men, Truth, Books, World

“Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers.”

J. Sidlow Baxter (1903–1999) Australian theologian

Reported in Charlie Jones, Bob Kelly, The Tremendous Power of Prayer (2000) p. 46.

Men, Personality

“I confess, Sir, I am at a loss to conceive how any man, who has ever read our Constitution as originally framed, or as it now exists, can listen a moment to such an argument. If anything be clearer than another on its face, it is, that it was intended to constitute a Christian State. I deny totally the gentleman's position, that the religious expressions it contains were intended only to show forth the pious sentiments of those who framed it. They were intended to incorporate into our system the principles of Christianity, — principles which belonged not only to those who framed, but to the whole people who adopted it. Sir, the people of that day were a Christian people; they adopted a Christian Constitution; they no more contemplated the existence of infidelity than the Athenian laws provided against the perpetration of parricide. They established a Christian Commonwealth; they wrote upon its walls, Salvation, and upon its gates, Praise; and Christianity is as clearly now its corner-stone, as if the initial letter of every page of our Statute Book, like that of some monkish manuscript, were illuminated with the figure of the Cross!”

Robert Charles Winthrop (1809–1894) American politician

Speech, "The Testimony of Infidels" (1836-02-11), delivered before the Massachusetts House of Representatives in opposition to a bill that would allow atheists to testify in court, quoted in Robert Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions, Little, Brown and Company, 1852, pp 194-195 http://books.google.com/books?id=NUizWSNaJpsC&pg=PA195&dq=robert+winthrop+christianity+addresses+and+speeches+on+various+occasions#PPA194,M1

People, Books, Law, Loss

“Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 3, Section 16
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Men, Pain, Truth, Stupidity

“Well, then I'd say it takes two to tango. My guess is that both of you are right and both of you are wrong. That's the way most arguments go, anyway. People are who they are and no one is perfect, but marriage is about becoming a team. You're going to spend the rest of your life learning about each other, and every now and then, things blow up. But the beauty of marriage is that if you picked the right person and you both love each other, you'll alway figure out a way to get through it.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Jeremy's father, Chapter 11, p. 148
2000s, At First Sight (2005)

Love, Life, Marriage, People

“Already handbills were in circulation; some presenting, in large print, the alternative of justice on the conspirators or ruin to the Republic; others in equally large print urging the observance of the law and the granting of the Appeal. Round these jutting islets of black capitals there were lakes of smaller characters setting forth arguments less necessary to be read: for it was an opinion entertained at that time (in the first flush of triumph at the discovery of printing), that there was no argument more widely convincing than question-begging phrases in large type.”

George Eliot book Romola

Volume III, Chapter XIII
Romola (1863)

Justice, Law, Question, Time

“If truth were left to a market philosophy, there would be no point in continuing to make an argument for which there are no takers, or to ask a question for which there are no answers. The minority community has other grounds to sustain a wholesome discomfort and thereby keeps the door open for solutions not yet found.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 99

Truth, Communication, Question

“Attic tragedies of stateliest and most regal argument.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Tractate of Education (1644)

“Inclination snatches arguments
To make indulgence seem judicious choice.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Book 1
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)

“She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as women judge men — not on the strength of their arguments, and not on their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, the strength of their soul, their compassion, and — ah, this above all — their conversation.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

Women, Men, Soul, Passion

“Structure joins the evocative concept of paradigm, a disarmingly simple dialectic of scientific change (long periods of paradigmatic "normal science" punctuated by short "revolutions"), and the apparent authority of historical example to show that major conceptual shifts in the natural sciences are effected not by logical argument alone but also by appeals to worldviews, religion, metaphysical commitments, notions of simplicity and order, and so on. The view that science, like other thought systems, advances or retreats through rhetoric and persuasion, not by logical necessity, was a revelation to people who had never practiced it or studied its history. The book comforted social scientists who wanted to assimilate their discipline to physics, Luddites who blamed social problems on scientists and engineers, and everyone who rejected authority. It repelled the philosophers of science at which it was aimed for the good reason that it undercut their belief that scientific knowledge advances by the application of rational criteria to the products of observation and experiment.”

John L. Heilbron (1934) American historian

Thomas Samuel Kuhn: 18 July 1922-17 June 1996 (1998)

People, Books, Religion, History

“Liberty dies where there is agreement without thought or argument.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"1968-2008" (2008)

“Insofar as I have written a self-help book, it is a how-to manual for receptivity: a description of how to tolerate what cannot be cured, and an argument that cures are not always appropriate even when they are feasible.”

Andrew Solomon (1963) American journalist

Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 12 Father, p. 701-702.

Books, Help

“Climate change argument is absolute crap.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Quoted in "A look back at most controversial Tony Abbott moments" http://www.news.com.au/national/a-look-back-at-most-controversial-tony-abbott-moments-after-prime-minister-apologises-for-winking/story-fncynjr2-1226927063505 on news.com.au, May 23, 2014. 2010

Change

“There is a widespread view that the war against jihadism and totalitarianism involves only differences of emphasis. In other words, one might object to the intervention in Iraq on the grounds that it drew resources away from Afghanistan - you know the argument. It's important to understand that this apparent agreement does not cover or include everybody. A very large element of the Left and of the isolationist Right is openly sympathetic to the other side in this war, and wants it to win. This was made very plain by the leadership of the "anti-war" movement, and also by Michael Moore when he shamefully compared the Iraqi fascist "insurgency" to the American Founding Fathers. To many of these people, any "anti-globalization" movement is better than none. With the Right-wingers it's easier to diagnose: they are still Lindberghians in essence and they think war is a Jewish-sponsored racket. With the Left, which is supposed to care about secularism and humanism, it's a bit harder to explain an alliance with woman-stoning, gay-burning, Jew-hating medieval theocrats. However, it can be done, once you assume that American imperialism is the main enemy. Even for those who won't go quite that far, the admission that the US Marine Corps might be doing the right thing is a little further than they are prepared to go - because what would then be left of their opposition credentials, which are so dear to them?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Love, Poverty and War" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C78DC231-4599-4745-9CA5-A398398916A0, FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29). 2000s, 2004

Hate, War, People, Understanding

“A double problem arises: There is first the difficulty of, if not the impossibility of demonstrating the existence of any creator or designer at all. I think I say something uncontroversial when I say that no theologian has ever conclusively demonstrated that such a designer can or does or ever has existed. The most you can do, by way of the argument from design, is to infer him or her or it from an apparent harmony in the arrangements - and this was at a time when that was the very best that, so to speak, could be done. But religion goes a little further than this already rather impossible task, and expects us to believe as follows: that the speaker not only can prove the existence of a said entity, but can claim to know this entity's mind - in fact, can claim to know it quite intimately; can claim to know his or her personal wishes; can, in turn, tell you what you may do, in his name - a quite large arrogation of power, you will suddenly notice, is being granted to the speaker here. The speaker can tell you that he knows - he cannot tell you how - but he can tell you that he knows, for example, that heaven hates ham, that god doesn't want you to eat pork products; he can tell you that god has a very very strong view about with whom you may have sexual relations, indeed, how you may have sexual relations with others; he can indicate, perhaps a little less convincingly but no less firmly, that there are certain books or courses of study that you might want to avoid or treat with great suspicion.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. Marvin Olasky, 14/05/2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMgMUHD_kPI?t=1m35s 2000s, 2007

God, Hate, Books, Religion

“For years, governments, corporations, and researchers have argued that the testing of animals to assess the risk of chemicals to human health is essential to ensure the well-being of our own species. But now, new breakthroughs in the field of genomics, bioinformatics, epigenetics, and computational toxicology are providing new research tools for studying the impact of toxic chemicals on human health that are far more accurate in assessing the risk of these chemicals to human beings. Antivivisection societies and animal rights organizations have made this argument for many, many years—only to be scorned by scientific bodies, medical associations, and industry lobbies who accuse them of being “anti-progress” in caring more about animals than people. Now it is the scientific establishment, interestingly enough, that has come to the very same conclusions.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

From a video for the Stop Vivisection campaign (10 July 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vep0YbndO14, transcribed in “Jeremy Rifkin: Opinion Piece on Stop Vivisection,” in Equivita.it http://equivita.it/index.php/it/comunicati/2-non-categorizzato/568-jeremy-rifkin-opinion-piece-en

People, Health, Study, Animals

“A common argument from the mouths of capitalist spokespeople, in the ideological struggle against socialism, is that socialism, or the period of building socialism into which we have entered, is characterized by the abolition of the individual for the sake of the state.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

“There is in American society, not only the the American society but more here than anywhere else, what I have come to call the official syllogism and this is a set of assumptions that we have about well-being and about how society should be organized that runs so deep that I think we don't realize we make them. And the only time you start to notice that you make them is when you can start to accumulate evidence that they are wrong. So what is this official syllogism?First, we all think that the more freedom people have, the more welfare they have. How could you think otherwise? This is [a] no-brainer. What argument could you make to suggest that there is anything wrong with this assumption?The second thing we think is that the more choice people have, the more freedom they have. What does freedom mean if not choice?”

Barry Schwartz (1946) American psychologist

The Paradox of Choice, Google TechTalks http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200# (April 27, 2006)

People, Thinking, Freedom, Time

“The gist of my argument is that men like Kraepelin, Bleuler and Freud were not what they claimed or seem to be—namely, physicians or medical investigators; they were, in fact, religious-political leaders and conquerors. Instead of discovering new diseases, they extended, through psychiatry, the imagery, vocabulary, jurisdiction, and hence the territory of medicine to what they were not, and are not, diseases in the original Virchowian sense.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry (1979)

Men, Disease, Sense

“Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous.”

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

Steve Paulson, "The flying spaghetti monster" http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/10/13/dawkins/index3.html (), Salon.com

Religion, Science

“How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself? Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book that it was in and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who passed it.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Men, Books, Age

“Libertarian philosophy lowers the logical and evidentiary standards for libertarian social science: if one believes that redistribution and regulation are immoral anyway because they violate self-ownership rights, then it is understandable that one would have a cavalier attitude about proving that redistribution and regulation cause unhappiness or “disorder,” or that they always serve the venal interests of politicians and bureaucrats. The orthodox libertarian schema implies that these consequentialist arguments are superfluous.”

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

Source: “What’s wrong with Libertarianism”, p. 445

Understanding, Science

“There are basically three formations of the argument by the Republicans: First, they start by making stuff up. You kind of have to wonder if any of them actually read the bill: 137 new agencies — not true; new IRS agents - not true; 'death panels' - not true; Members aren't covered — not true; no tort reform in it — not true. You know, I want to just advise people watching at home playing that now popular drinking game of you take a shot whenever the Republicans say something that's not true, please assign a designated driver. This is going to be a long afternoon.”

Anthony Weiner (1964) American politician

Speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijmgZGtvkxg on the floor of the House, on Republicans' statements on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (January 19, 2011)

Death, People, Home, Game

“This is the problem with the argument that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear: it ignores the issue of power. If we are not careful, transparency can be used to increase, rather than reduce, the information asymmetry between ruler and ruled.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media

Fear, Problem

“Any restrictions to freedom of expression will always open the door to possible others, because analogical reasoning can mount arguments showing why this or that class of objects is closely similar to those for which exceptions have been made.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter Six, Freedom Of Expression, p. 230

Freedom

“Our central argument is that industrial relations practices and outcomes are shaped by the interactions of environmental forces along with the strategic choices and values of American managers, union leaders, workers and public policy decision makers.”

Thomas A. Kochan (1947) American academic

Source: The transformation of American industrial relations, 1986, p. 5

Decision

“There is no pure visualization in the sense of a priori philosophies; every visualization is determined by previous sense perceptions, and any separation into perceptual space and space of visualization is not permissible, since the specifically visual elements of the imagination are derived from perceptual space. What led to the mistaken conception of pure visualization was rather an improper interpretation of the normative function… an essential element of all visual representations. Indeed, all arguments which have been introduced for the distinction of perceptual space and space of visualization are base on this normative component of the imagination.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Imagination, Sense

“Savage tribes used physical force to manage their women. The club and the lash were their only arguments. Moslem fanatics go a step further in saying women have no souls.”

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) American politician

'Why I Am a Suffragist? essay, dated May 14, 1915. Cornerstones of Georgia History, p. 165 http://books.google.com/books?id=0qdkKS2F42MC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=rebecca+latimer+felton+why+i+am+a+suffragist&source=bl&ots=B1fM_lWjgv&sig=bOmSGdPp921qKNy3TlmDU3uWaEc#v=onepage&q=rebecca%20latimer%20felton%20why%20i%20am%20a%20suffragist&f=false.

Women, Soul

“When I used my real name, all of a sudden there was a lot of commentary. 'Oh, you're a woman' or 'You can't really be a woman' or 'You don't write like a woman.' Or all of a sudden my arguments were not taken as seriously or were judged as hysterical or emotional…. So I got much more interested in why this was happening.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Woo, Elaine (April 23, 2014). "Adrianne Wadewitz dies at 37; helped diversify Wikipedia" http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-adrianne-wadewitz-20140424,0,1077455.story. Los Angeles Times.

“Orta, leading off, swings and hits it to the right side, and the pitcher has to cover he is … SAFE! SAFE! SAFE! And we'll have an argument! Sparky, I think he was out!”

Jack Buck (1924–2002) American sportscaster

Calling Don Denkinger's blown call in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series that ignited a Royals game-winning rally.
1980s

Thinking

“Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle … At the time the compliments that he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for Socialism he reminds me and the public that I am deaf and blind and especially liable to error.… The Eagle and I are at war. When it fights back, let it fight fair.… It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

"How I Became a Socialist", New York Call (3 November 1912)

War, Error, Time, Fight

“Philosophy … lost its prestige to the extent that it lost its evident advantage in cleverness to "normal life." In the transition from archaic teachings of wisdom to philosophy based on argument, it itself was engulfed in the twilight of alienation from life. It had to accept that the independent cleverness theories of pragmatics, economics, strategy, and politics proved themselves to be its better, until, with its logical niceties, it became infantile and academic, and stood there as the Utopian idiot with its reminiscences about great ideals. Today philosophy is surrounded on all sides by maliciously clever empiricisms and realistic disciplines that "know better."”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 536

Life, Wisdom

“Life as we live it is obviously very brutal, and makes us insensitive, dull, heavy, stupid, and so we may hope through ideas, through ideational mentation, to bring about a certain quality of sensitivity.… But even when we are sharpened and quickened intellectually by argument, by discussion, by reading, this does not actually bring about that quality of sensitivity. And you know all those people who are erudite, who read, who theorize, who can discuss brilliantly, are extraordinarily dull people. So I think sensitivity, which destroys mediocrity, is very important to understand. Because most of us are becoming, I am afraid, more mediocre. We are not using that word in any derogative sense at all, but merely observing the fact of mediocrity in the sense of being average, fairly well educated, earning a livelihood and perhaps capable of clever discussion; but this leaves us still bourgeois, mediocre, not only in our attitudes but in our activities.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Part V, Ch. 3 : 3rd Public Talk Madras 14th January 1968 "The Sacred" http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/awakening-of-intelligence/1968-01-14-jiddu-krishnamurti-awakening-of-intelligence-the-sacred 1970s, The Awakening of Intelligence (1973)

Life, People, Stupidity, Education

“It has always been denied by the republican party in this country, that the Constitution had given the power of incorporation to Congress. On the establishment of the Bank of the United States, this was the great ground on which that establishment was combated; and the party prevailing supported it only on the argument of its being an incident to the power given them for raising money.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Dr. Maese, 1809. ME 12:231
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

Money, Support, Country

“One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/09/03/random_thoughts?page=full&comments=true, Sep 03, 2007 2000s

Pain, People, Education, Motivation

“Power and influence have been the center of—this is not necessarily an argument in favor of keeping it, but power and influence have been the center of the field of the study of politics from the beginning. And what’s more, they are the central elements in all of our lives, our daily lives and our family lives, this interview going on—and they’re enormously complex.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

A Conversation with Robert A. Dahl (2009)

Family, Study

“It is interesting to note that Newton was not impressed by Descartes' great argument for God's existence derived from the idea of a perfect Being, nor by other metaphysical arguments that we have mentioned; yet Newton's own arguments for God's existence from the uniformity and suitability of different parts of the universe would not have seemed like proofs to Descartes.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

God, Idea, Universe, Parting

“New diseases like syphilis seemed to call for new and "stronger" medicines; and this became one of the stock arguments for resort to the Paracelsian chemical pharmacopeia and mystical medical philosophy. With every fundamental of medicine thus called into question, the only logical recourse was to observe results of cures administered in accordance with the old Galenic as against the new Paracelsian theories, and then to choose whichever worked better. The swift development of European medical practice to levels of skill exceeding all other civilized traditions resulted.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

Disease, Question

“The moral faculties are generally esteemed, and with justice, as of higher value than the intellectual powers. But we should always bear in mind that the activity of the mind in vividly recalling past impressions is one of the fundamental though secondary bases of conscience. This fact affords the strongest argument for educating and stimulating in all possible ways the intellectual faculties of every human being.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", page 393 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=410&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Education, Justice, Way, Past

“I think that argument is completely morally bankrupt, and I think people know that when they make it. There's a very big difference between having a sincere, passionate interest in a topic and being a paid shill … Particularly for PR firms, it's something they should really very strongly avoid: ever touching an article.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

PRWeek (30 Jan 2007) http://www.prweek.com/us/login/required/629646 In response to suggestions Wikipedia might change policies to allow PR firms to edit the site without breaking a rule called "WP:AUTO".

People, Thinking, Passion, Sincerity

“"This is a very old argument. The greatest happiness of the greatest number. If you think about it, you'll find it always works out that a few suffer for the good of the rest."
"In stories," Gair agreed hopelessly. "brave men die defending the rest. But this isn't like that!"
"Call it the modern version," Mr Claybury suggested kindly.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Power of Three

Source: Power of Three (1976), p. 201.

Men, Happiness, Thinking, Suffering

“Let us not be surprised, however, if the study of the principles of argumentation — or even Burke's much mis-taught Speech — seems dry without the prospect of actual debate. We should hardly expect a half-back to feel much enthusiasm over reading the rules of the game and tackling a dummy if he could not look forward to tackling a man. When elocution and argumentative writing have failed to stimulate interest, formal debate may succeed, for it is a kind of game. In the time limit, the order of speakers, the alternation of rides, the actual struggle of opposing forces, the give and take of rebuttal, the fixed rules and the ethics of conduct, the qualifications for success, and the final awarding of victory, debate has much in common with tennis and football.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. viii

Feeling, Game, Study, Time

“In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet [Muhammad] rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance. This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture; whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius… If the composition of the Koran exceed the faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes?”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

EGPaIV" Edward Gibbon, [1788], Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gibbon/05/daf05010.htm, Vol. 5, Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants. Part IV. The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)

Men, God, Truth, Books

“Kapila's arguments are listed [by Dr. Ambedkar], and the last one introduces yet another fundamental concept of Buddhism: suffering (dukkha). It is brought in from an unusual angle: 'Kapila argued that the process of development of the unevolved is through the activities of three constituents of which it is made up, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. These are called three Gunas. [Sattva is] light in nature, which reveals, which causes pleasure to men; [Rajas is] what impels and moves, what produces activity; [Tamas is] what is heavy and puts under restraint, what produces the state of indifference or inactivity (') When the three Gunas are in perfect balance, none overpowering the other, the universe appears static (achetan) and ceases to evolve. When the three Gunas are not in balance, one overpowers the other, the universe becomes dynamic (sachetan) and evolution begins. Asked why the Gunas become unbalanced, the answer which Kapila gave was that this disturbance in the balance of the three Gunas was due to the presence of Dukkha (suffering).”

Kapila Vedic sage, of the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy

Buddhism is quite close to the Samkhya-Yoga viewpoint: to Samkhya for its philosophical framework, to Yoga for its methods of meditation.
Quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743, with quote from Ambedkar: The Buddha and his Dhamma, 1:5:2.

Men, Pleasure, Nature, Light

“When you argue with a child," she said warmly, "you give a good argument and the child says yah, yah! You understand him and he doesn't listen, so the child wins.”

John Steinbeck book Burning Bright

Mordeen to Victor in Act One: The Circus
Burning Bright (1950)

Understanding

“We are so accustomed to hear arithmetic spoken of as one of the three fundamental ingredients in all schemes of instruction, that it seems like inquiring too curiously to ask why this should be. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic—these three are assumed to be of co-ordinate rank. Are they indeed co-ordinate, and if so on what grounds?
In this modern “trivium” the art of reading is put first. Well, there is no doubt as to its right to the foremost place. For reading is the instrument of all our acquisition. It is indispensable. There is not an hour in our lives in which it does not make a great difference to us whether we can read or not. And the art of Writing, too; that is the instrument of all communication, and it becomes, in one form or other, useful to us every day. But Counting—doing sums,—how often in life does this accomplishment come into exercise? Beyond the simplest additions, and the power to check the items of a bill, the arithmetical knowledge required of any well-informed person in private life is very limited. For all practical purposes, whatever I may have learned at school of fractions, or proportion, or decimals, is, unless I happen to be in business, far less available to me in life than a knowledge, say, of history of my own country, or the elementary truths of physics. The truth is, that regarded as practical arts, reading, writing, and arithmetic have no right to be classed together as co-ordinate elements of education; for the last of these is considerably less useful to the average man or woman not only than the other two, but than 267 many others that might be named. But reading, writing, and such mathematical or logical exercise as may be gained in connection with the manifestation of numbers, have a right to constitute the primary elements of instruction. And I believe that arithmetic, if it deserves the high place that it conventionally holds in our educational system, deserves it mainly on the ground that it is to be treated as a logical exercise. It is the only branch of mathematics which has found its way into primary and early education; other departments of pure science being reserved for what is called higher or university instruction. But all the arguments in favor of teaching algebra and trigonometry to advanced students, apply equally to the teaching of the principles or theory of arithmetic to schoolboys. It is calculated to do for them exactly the same kind of service, to educate one side of their minds, to bring into play one set of faculties which cannot be so severely or properly exercised in any other department of learning. In short, relatively to the needs of a beginner, Arithmetic, as a science, is just as valuable—it is certainly quite as intelligible—as the higher mathematics to a university student.”

Joshua Girling Fitch (1824–1903) British educationalist

Source: Lectures on Teaching, (1906), pp. 267-268.

Life, Truth, Education, School

“Paul Krugman is a very smart and very annoying person. Over the past few years he's been hammering away at political and economic advocates for austerity policies with unmitigated glee and derision. He does so with a brio and condescension that some people can find off-putting -- but that doesn't mean that he's wrong. … Look, I think Paul Krugman has a few policy blind spots. His method of argumentation alienates as many people as it attracts. But he's not wrong when he's talking about austerity. In his response, Michael Kinsley has managed to embody the conventional wisdom in Washington -- and in doing so, embody every policy caricature of Paul Krugman's worldview.”

Daniel Drezner (1968) American journalist

The worst piece of conventional wisdom you will read this year http://www.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/16/the_worst_piece_of_conventional_wisdom_you_will_read_this_year (MAY 16, 2013)

Wisdom, People, Thinking, Past

“… the best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments, which seems to be equally true in the intellectual and in the moral sense.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1956, p. 31.
1950s

Support, Sense

“Secondly, the student is trained to accept historical mis-statements on the authority of the book. If education is a pre- paration for adult life, he learns first to accept without question, and later to make his own contribution to the creation of historical fallacies, and still later to perpetuate what he has learnt. In this way, ignorant authors are leading innocent students to hysterical conclusions. The process of the writers' mind provides excellent material for a manual on logical fallacies. Thirdly, the student is told nothing about the relationship between evidence and truth. The truth is what the book ordains and the teacher repeats. No source is cited. No proof is offered. No argument is presented. The authors play a dangerous game of winks and nods and faints and gestures with evidence. The art is taught well through precept and example. The student grows into a young man eager to deal in assumptions but inapt in handling inquiries. Those who become historians produce narratives patterned on the textbooks on which they were brought up. Fourthly, the student is compelled to face a galling situation in his later years when he comes to realize that what he had learnt at school and college was not the truth. Imagine a graduate of one of our best colleges at the start of his studies in history in a university in Europe. Every lecture he attends and every book he reads drive him mad with exasperation, anger and frustration. He makes several grim discoveries. Most of the "facts", interpretations and theories on which he had been fostered in Pakistan now turn out to have been a fata morgana, an extravaganza of fantasies and reveries, myths and visions, whims and utopias, chimeras and fantasies.”

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (1927–2009) historian

The Murder of History, critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan, 1993

Life, Truth, Books, Education

“Facts are God’s arguments : we should be careful never to misunderstand or pervert them.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 162.

God

“I think I probably made a mistake in the Hardwick case… I do think it was inconsistent in a general way with Roe. When I had the opportunity to reread the opinions a few months later, I thought the dissent had the better of the arguments.”

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1907–1998) American judge

At NYU Law School, (18 October 1990); after retirement from the Court, reflecting on his vote in Bowers v. Hardwick to uphold laws making homosexual sex a crime for which people could be imprisoned. Reported in Nat Hentoff, " Infamous Sodomy Law Struck Down http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9850,213790,2210,6.html", The Village Voice, 22 December 1998. 1990s

Way, Thinking

Quotes about argument page 4

Quotes about argument
page 4