Quotes about argument (1377 quotes, page 8)

“The argument to raise taxes to pay back the debt, that's one thing, but my experience tells me that it's not possible. Government raises taxes, they're gonna spend that money in other places. I'm gonna do a better job at balancing revenues and expenditures… That was a responsibility that we had, but we prioritized what government should or shouldn't be doing and as a result of that, again showed a fiscal discipline that I don't think anyone else can demonstrate.”

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

Statement on Taxes
YouTube
2011-08-23
http://youtu.be/227YyBf7-KQ
2012-02-24
Sound Government

Money , Thinking

“Again, Mahāmati, there may be some unwitted people in the future time, who, beginning to lead the homeless life according to my teaching, are acknowledged as sons of the Śākya, and carry the Kāshāya robe about them as a badge, but who are in thought evilly affected by erroneous reasonings. They may talk about various discriminations which they make in their moral discipline, being addicted to the view of a personal soul. Being under the influence of the thirst for [meat-] taste, they will string together in various ways some sophistic arguments to defend meat-eating. They think they are giving me an unprecedented calumny when they discriminate and talk about facts that are capable of various interpretations. Imagining that this fact allows this interpretation, [they conclude that] the Blessed One permits meat as proper food, and that it is mentioned among permitted foods and that probably the Tathagata himself partook of it. But, Mahāmati, nowhere in the sutras is meat permitted as something enjoyable, nor it is referred to as proper among the foods prescribed”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

for the Buddha's followers
Mahayana, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter Eight. On Meat-eating

Life , People , Food , Way

“…[I]n three notable instances the Court has suffered severely from self-inflicted wounds. The first of these was the Dred Scott case. … There the Supreme Court decided that Dred Scott, a negro, not being a citizen could not sue in the United States Courts and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. … [T]he grave injury that the Court sustained through its decision has been universally recognized. Its action was a public calamity. … [W]idespread and bitter attacks upon the judges who joined in the decision undermined confidence in the Court. … It was many years before the Court, even under new judges, was able to retrieve its reputation.…[The second instance was] the legal tender cases decided in 1870. … From the standpoint of the effect on public opinion there can be no doubt that the reopening of the case was a serious mistake and the overruling in such a short time, and by one vote, of the previous decision shook popular respect for the Court.… [The third instance happened] [t]wenty-five years later, when the Court had recovered its prestige, [and] its action in the income tax cases gave occasion for a bitter assault. … [After questions about the validity of the income tax] had been reserved owing to an equal division of the Court, a reargument was ordered and in the second decision the act was held to be unconstitutional by a majority of one. Justice Jackson was ill at the time of the first argument but took part in the final decision, voting in favor of the validity of the statute. It was evident that the result [holding the statute invalid] was brought about by a change in the vote of one of the judges who had participated in the first decision. … [T]he decision of such an important question by a majority of one after one judge had changed his vote aroused a criticism of the Court which has never been entirely stilled.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

"The Supreme Court of the United States: Its Foundation, Methods and Achievements," Columbia University Press, p. 50 (1928). ISBN 1-893122-85-9.

Justice , Confidence , Question , Decision

“Everywhere, unthinking mobs of "independent thinkers" wield tired clichés like cudgels, pummeling those who dare question “enlightened” dogma. If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.starbucks.com/retail/thewayiseeit_featuredauthor_goldberg.asp Starbucks "The Way I See It" #22]
2000s, 2005

Men , Question

“It has been maintained, that Agriculture is, not only, the most productive, but the only productive species of industry. The reality of this suggestion in either aspect, has, however, not been verified by any accurate detail of facts and calculations; and the general arguments, which are adduced to prove it, are rather subtil and paradoxical, than solid or convincing.”

Alexander Hamilton Report on Manufactures

Report on Manufactures (1791)

Reality

“So far as one understands a man, one is that man. The man of genius takes his place in the above argument as he who understands incomparably more other beings than the average man. Goethe is said to have said of himself that there was no vice or crime of which he could not trace the tendency in himself, and that at some period of his life he could not have understood fully. The genius, therefore, is a more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the more really and strongly he has these others within him.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Einen Menschen verstehen heißt also: auch er sein. Der geniale Mensch aber offenbarte sich an jenen Beispielen eben als der Mensch, welcher ungleich mehr Wesen versteht als der mittelmäßige. Goethe soll von sich gesagt haben, es gebe kein Laster und kein Verbrechen, zu dem er nicht die Anlage in sich verspürt, das er nicht in irgend einem Zeitpunkte seines Lebens vollauf verstanden habe. Der geniale Mensch ist also komplizierter, zusammengesetzter, reicher; und ein Mensch ist um so genialer zu nennen, je mehr Menschen er in sich vereinigt, und zwar, wie hinzugefügt werden muß, je lebendiger, mit je größerer Intensität er die anderen Menschen in sich hat.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 106.

Life , Men , Understanding , Personality

“There were a lot of people who were Reaganauts going in, as there are always people who are conservatives going in. But they don't act like conservatives after they get there. There is skill to maneuvering the bureaucracy. And I think one argument I could make would be, I've never run for office, I'm not a conventional politician, that's for sure, but I have been in government, and I know how it works. I have actually gotten things done in the government.”

John R. Bolton (1948) American lawyer and diplomat

"The Man with the Mustache"

People , Thinking

“I had seen him [Mahatama Gandhi] from a distance This was going to be the first personal contact. As I ascended the stairs of Manibahavan…I was feeling the thrill of anticipation of a great event. I entered the room and the awe which the scene inside inspired in my heart has not been erased from my memory. I sat in front of the Mahatma…After a while Gandhiji turned to me and asked me about the work that I was doing…He then inquired about my situation. Would I have to face any difficulties if I came away to join the movement? I reflected for a few fleeting moments. I asked myself…How can an army like this function if every soldier who is recruited has to place his personal difficulties before the General. I replied to him that I had no problems for his consideration. Then an interesting conversation followed. Lala Lajpat Rai took up the thread and asked Gandhiji to permit me to proceed to the Punjab, the place of my origin and join him, in the work of the movement there. Thereafter Shankarlal Banker put forward the argument that since my political birth was in Bombay I should stick to this place. The Mahatma gave his verdict in favour of Bombay and thus the interview ended. I found that Bunker was the key figure in the organization in Bombay then and a number of activities were being carried out under his personal direction.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

In, p. 5-6
Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People

Feeling , Birth , Problem , Memory

“This relationship is the foundation for the argument, made by some trade unionists and labour advocates, that high wages can actually be "good for business". The precedent set by Henry Ford in 1914, who offered workers $5.00 per day (a very high wage at the time) so they could afford to buy the same cars they made, is often invoked.”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 3, Chapter 13, Employment and Unemployment, p. 158
Economics For Everyone (2008)

Cars , Business , Time

“I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on wh. we trample are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (3 January 1811)

Thinking , Tree , Animals

“At its core, the argument against racism, at least as it works to further black interests, is an argument against collectivism. You're meant to avoid judging an entire people based on the color of their epidermis or the conduct of a statistically significant number of them. It is, however, deemed perfectly acceptable to malign and milk Europeans for all they're worth, based on the lack of pigment in their skin and their overall better socio-economic performance.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Europeans Abolished Slavery; Africans/Muslims Still Practice It." http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263735/europeans-abolished-slavery-africansmuslims-still-ilana-mercer FrontPage Magazine 8/4/016.
2010s, 2016

People , Color

“…the argument is that by bombing at a time when most of the atrocities were attributed to the KLA guerrillas, with the anticipation that the bombing would lead to far worse atrocities, NATO was preventing atrocities. The fact that this is the strongest argument that can be contrived by serious analysts, and I stress serious because there's plenty of nonsense, that tells us a good deal about the decision to bomb, particularly when we recall that there apparently were diplomatic options.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2005, Illegal but Legitimate: A Dubious Doctrine for the Times, 2004

Decision , Time

“I would not hesitate to say that nine out of ten of the critics of the peace movement get the argument turned upside down. "You cannot change human nature" has become a sort of incantation with those critics. Perhaps you cannot "change human nature" — I don't indeed know what the phrase means. But you can certainly change human behavior, which is what matters, as the whole panorama of history shows.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Peace and the Public Mind (1935)

Peace , Behavior , History , Nature

“What is the moral argument for an affirmative action that justifies unending race discrimination against a declining white working class, who have become the expendables of our multicultural regime?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

"The Great White Hope" http://buchanan.org/blog/great-white-hope-125286 (May 26, 2016), Patrick J. Buchanan
2010s

“What have I to say to the Doctor’s personal abuse? Nothing. A man may call me a devil, or the devil, or he may say that I am incapable of telling the truth, or that I tell lies, and yet all this proves nothing. My arguments remain unanswered. I cannot afford to call Dr. Buckley names, I have good mental manners. The cause I represent (in part) is too great, too sacred, to be stained by an ignorant or a malicious personality.”

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

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Truth , Parting , Personality

“In the months before I made wiki, we had been having an argument. I think Kent Beck and I were on one side. People who had a lot of faith in the prevailing dogma of software engineering were on the other side. We said, "Collective code ownership is good." They said, "That's ridiculous. You'll never get responsibility. You'll never get quality if you don't have responsibility. And the only way you'll get responsibility is ownership. You have to pin the bugs back on somebody if you want them to ever rise above producing bugs."”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

And I said, "Well that's wrong."
A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

People , Faith , Way , Thinking

“My arguments were beginning to sound a little strained to me, too. I was in the position of a priest trying to sell religion.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 32, “Juniper: Visitors” (p. 365)

Religion

“R. W. K. Paterson makes a central point of identifying Stirner with nihilism. His argument depends on a failure to distinguish between social values, which Stirner does reject, and personal values, to which he is more overtly committed than any other philosopher.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 108, note

Failure , Dependency , Personality

“In this aspect, the case for democracy rests on the argument that free discussion and expression of opinion are the most suitable techniques of arriving at the moral imperative implicitly common to all. Voting, from this point of view, is not a device whereby each individual expresses his personal interests, but rather where each individual gives his opinion of the general will.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 85 as cited in: Gerry Mackie (2006) "The Reception of Social Choice Theory By Democratic Theory".

Democracy , Personality

“Political thought as we understand it began in Athens because the Athenians were a trading people who looked at their contemporaries and saw how differently they organized themselves. If they had not lived where they did and organized their economic lives as they did, they could not have seen the contrast. Given the opportunity, they might not have paid attention to it. The Israelites of the Old Testament narrative were very conscious of their neighbors, Egyptian, Babylonian, and other, not least because they were often reduced to slavery or near-slavery by them. That narrative makes nothing of the fact that Egypt was a bureaucratic theocracy; it emphasizes that the Egyptians did not worship Yahweh. The history of Old Testament politics is the history of a people who did their best to have no politics. They saw themselves as under the direct government of God, with little room to decide their own fate except by obeying or disobeying God’s commandments. Only when God took them at their word and allowed them to choose a king did they become a political society, with familiar problems of competition for office and issues of succession. For the Jews, politics was a fall from grace. For the Greeks, it was an achievement. Many besides Plato thought it a flawed achievement; when historians and philosophers began to articulate its flaws, the history of political thought began among the argumentative Athenians.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 1 : Why Herodotus?

God , Fate , People , History

“There is no difficulty in vindicating the principle of a hereditary monarchy. The experience of every country and of all ages, the practical reasonings of common sense, arguments of the highest theory, arguments of most commonplace convenience, all unite to show the wisdom which places the supreme leadership of the State beyond the reach of private ambition and above the shocks and changes of party strife.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 24
Early career years (1898–1929)

Wisdom , Age , Sense , Change

“And this [experimental] science verifies all natural and man-made things in particular, and in their appropriate discipline, by the experimental perfection, not by arguments of the still purely speculative sciences, nor through the weak, and imperfect experiences of practical knowledge. And therefore, this is the matron of all preceding sciences, and the final end of all speculation.”
Et hæc scientia certificat omnia naturalia et artificialia in particulari et in propria disciplina, per experientiam perfectam; non per argumenta, ut scientiæ pure speculativae, nec per debiles et imperfecta experientias ut scientiae operativæ. Et ideo hæc est domina omnium scientiarum præcedentium, et finis totius speculationis.

Roger Bacon book Opus Tertium

Ch 13 ed. J. S. Brewer Opera quadam hactenus inedita (1859) p. 46
Opus Tertium, c. 1267

Nature , Knowledge , Science , Perfection

“His conduct still right, with his argument wrong.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: Retaliation (1774), Line 46.

“Although it is always somewhat dangerous to look for the cause of a complex sociological phenomenon in a single event, nonetheless, I believe that a cause can be made for the proposition that the present widespread interest in the quantum theory can be traced to a single paper with the nontransparent title “On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,” which was written in 1964 by the then thirty-four-year-old Irish physicist John Bell. It was published in the obscure journal Physics, which expired after a few issues. Bell’s paper was, as it happens, published in its first issue. Bell, who has worked since 1960 at CERN, the gigantic elementary-particle physics laboratory near Geneva, has been known to claim that his paper involves only the use of “high school mathematics”; however, its six pages are dense with an extremely abstract set of arguments, which even professionals in the field must work hard at to understand. In fact, for several years after its publication, few if any professional physicists bothered to try.”

Jeremy Bernstein (1929) American physicist

Quantum Profiles (1991), John Stewart Bell: Quantum Engineer

School , Mathematics , Understanding

“Your arguments are overwhelming. You’re obviously right — and the answer is No.”

Joel Barnett, Baron Barnett (1923–2014) British politician

To education secretary Reg Prentice
Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11205400/Lord-Barnett-obituary.html obituary, 3 Nov 2014

“… it's one thing to believe in something that might be true (like God in general or Christianity specifically) even though neither can be substantiated or tested in any objective way. But it is a whole other matter to willfully deceive others into believing things which are definitely not true -like creationism, especially when we can also prove that those doing this know their assorted arguments are bogus, and know they’re lying to our children, and that they hope to continue doing so under the guise of “education”. Creationism extorts support through peer-pressure, prejudice, and paranoid propaganda, and sells itself with short, simplistic slogans which appeal to those who don’t want to think too much, or are afraid to question their own beliefs. Worst of all, it actually forbids critical inquiry, and promotes anti-intellectualism, and it is based on at least a dozen foundational falsehoods. First and foremost among them is the idea that accepting evolution requires the rejection of theism, if not all other religious or spiritual beliefs as well.”

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

"1st Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJX68ELbAY, Youtube (November 11, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

God , Children , Education , Hope

“Obviously something is wrong with the entire argument of "obviousness."”

Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–1976) American sociologist

Paul Lazarsfeld, "The American Soldier — An Expository Review", Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 13, no. 3, (1949) pp. 377-404 at p. 380; About the interpretation of results in social science as obvious.

“Paradoxically, some of the sources of disbelief are to be found amongst the arguments of believers. … Theologians often formulated the most dangerously skeptical arguments in their efforts to test the impregnability of their own faith, and in doing so, they unknowingly furnished atheists with ready-made weapons.”

Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) British theatre director (born 1934)

Episode one: "Shadows of Doubt".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

Faith , Effort

“Having alternative currencies is great, right, because, historically, government's had a monopoly on currency. … At the end of the day, why should only politicians—either directly or indirectly—control the currency? We can reduce transaction cost, provide an alternative, and—look, I don't know whether it'll be Bitcoin or not—but I think the concept of digital currencies is here to stay, and the fact that a politician would write to try to ban them in their infancy is just the wrong way to go about it. Let the market determine whether there's any value there or not. … If people are saying, "Look, we gotta ban Bitcoin because it's somewhat anonymous and anonymous transactions can occur," or "because it's possible for criminals to use it," all of those arguments can be used to say, "Just ban dollars."”

Jared Polis (1975) American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and US Representative

… The government doesn't need to "treat" it [Bitcoin] at all. … The government policy should be completely agnostic about what unit of exchange is used.
Jared Polis, interviewed by Kennedy, Matt Welch, and Kmele Foster on The Independents, Fox Business (10 March 2014).

People , Way , Thinking

“In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument, raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.”

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

Notes on Religion (October 1776), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-02_Bk.pdf, p. 256
1770s

Age , Religion

“Their [the political leaders'] skill consists in a quick perception of the people's wishes as to the road which they desire to travel. This ascertained, the leader places himself at the head of the moving column, and shouts loudly for the people to advance on his lead, which he assures them is direct, suitable, and pleasant. …They will diverge no inch to please him, but he must crook and turn as their wayward fancy may indicate. He must bear all their censure, too, when the path taken leads into a quagmire; and, notwithstanding the mud and bruises, of which he obtains a double portion, he must maintain by argument that no other road could have been taken consistently with the prosperity, honour, and security of a great, wise, free, and virtuous people.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, or, The Progress of a False Position: (1841)

People , Travel

“Skidelsky tells us, Keynes was also practical, absorbed in questions of economic policy, argumentative, benevolent and intolerant, often rude, and had an intellectual arrogance that would allow positions previously held with great passion to be calmly abandoned. Well, that is exactly what the Cambridge faculty was like in the 1960s. Not only did the ghost of Keynes dominate the content of economics education at Cambridge, it also dominated the style. That style could be sustained with substance only by the extraordinarily gifted. So it is not surprising that the Cambridge faculty, although still very "Keynesian," looks much more conventional these days.”

John Eatwell, Baron Eatwell (1945) British economist

"Citizen Keynes", 1994

Education , Question , Passion

“THE prejudice which is commonly entertained against metaphysical speculations seems to arise chiefly from two causes: First, from an apprehension that the subjects about which they are employed, are placed beyond the reach of the human faculties; and, secondly, from a belief that these subjects have no relation to the business of life.
The frivolous and absurd discussions which abound in the writings of most metaphysical authors, afford but too many arguments in justification of these opinions; and if such discussions were to be admitted as a fair specimen of what the human mind is able to accomplish in this department of science, the contempt, into which it has fallen of late, might with justice be regarded, as no inconsiderable evidence of the progress, which true philosophy has made in the present age.”

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) Scottish philosopher and mathematician

Source: Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 1792, p. 9; Lead paragraph (I)

Life , Age , Justice , Business

“It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his healing. The sick are more deplorably lost than the sinning, if the sick cannot rely on God for help and the sinning can. … The universal belief in physics weighs against the high and mighty truths of Christian metaphysics. This erroneous general belief, which sustains medicine and produces all medical results, works against Christian Science[. ] … If we would heal by the Spirit, we must not hide the talent of spiritual healing under the napkin of its form[. ] … The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.”

Mary Baker Eddy book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 143:5, 155:15 (1867).

Love , God , Truth , Fear

“That maxim, it’s not an argument against atheism—it’s an argument against foxholes.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 8, “Famine” (p. 213)

“The followers of Heraclitus insisted the Immortal Principle was change and motion. But Parmenides' disciple, Zeno, proved through a series of paradoxes that any perception of motion and change is illusory. Reality had to be motionless.
The resolution of the arguments of the Cosmologists came from a new direction entirely, from a group Phædrus seemed to feel were early humanists. They were teachers, but what they sought to teach was not principles, but beliefs of men. Their object was not any single absolute truth, but the improvement of men. All principles, all truths, are relative, they said. "Man is the measure of all things."”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

These were the famous teachers of "wisdom," the Sophists of ancient Greece.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

Wisdom , Men , Truth , Feeling

“Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"From The Wreave Commentary"; p. 136
The Bureau of Sabotage series, Whipping Star (1969)

Support , Thinking

“Inconvenience arising from the operation of an Act of Parliament can be no ground of argument in a Court of law.”

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley (1744–1804) British judge and politician

Grigby v. Oakes (1801), 1 Bos. & Pull. 528.

Law

“The test of an intelligence officer is not so much the ability to accumulate information; it's to judge between different pieces of information, and not to take a piece of information and use it in a piece of analysis simply because it fits your case, but to use it because it either comes from a reliable source like signals intercepts, from a human source that has been vetted over time as a reliable person, or it comes from documentary information -- papers you've stolen from another government or some other organization. The work that came out of Feith's shop that I saw, especially on Al Qaeda and Iraq, was simply … finding pieces of information in the world of intelligence information that fit the argument they wanted to make. Tenet, to his credit, had us go back 10 years in the agency's records and look and see what we knew about Iraq and Al Qaeda. I was available at the time, and I led the effort. We went back 10 years. We examined about 20,000 documents, probably something along the line of 75,000 pages of information, and there was no connection between [Al Qaeda] and Saddam.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

" The Dark Side http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/scheuer.html, PBS Frontline Interview, (22 June 2006).
2000s

World , Intelligence , Effort , Time

“As whites are dying off, they are not replacing themselves. The black population, now about 32 million, will double in the next 60 years. And the Hispanic population will triple.I know it is considered impolite to worry about this trend. We are all the same under the skin, the argument goes. Whatever the truth of that assertion, it is an emprical fact that, in a mixed-economy democracy, nearly every racial and ethnic group votes its group interest except the white population. Whites don't vote for candidates that promise to promote white interests, whereas blacks and Hispanics do.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1993
January
The Disappearing White Majority
Ron Paul Survival Report
7
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/January1993.pdf, quoted in * 2011-12-23
TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul's Most Incendiary Newsletters
New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Survival Report

Truth , Democracy

“Essential to the Catholic mind is what I would characterize as a keen sense of the prolongation of the Incarnation throughout space and time, an extension that is made possible through the mystery of the church. Catholics see God’s continued enfleshment in the oil, water, bread, imposed hands, wine, and salt of the sacraments; they appreciate it in the gestures, movements, incensations, and songs of the Liturgy; they savor it in the texts, arguments, and debates of the theologians; they sense it in the graced governance of popes and bishops; they love it in the struggles and missions of the saints; they know it in the writings of Catholic poets and in the cathedrals crafted by Catholic architects, artists, and workers. In short, all of this discloses to the Catholic eye and mind the ongoing presence of the Word made flesh, namely Christ.”

Robert Barron (bishop) (1959) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, author, scholar and Catholic evangelist.

Father Barron, Robert. Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith (Kindle Locations 75-81). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Love , God , Sense , Water

“In my essay I refuted the Hayek-Robbins argument by showing how a market mechanism could be established in a socialist economy which would lead to the solution of the simultaneous equations by means of an empirical procedure of trial and error. […] Were I to rewrite my essay today my task would be much simpler. My answer to Hayek and Robbins would be: so what’s the trouble?
Let us put the simultaneous equations on an electronic computer and we shall obtain the solution in less than a second. The market process with its cumbersome tatonnements appears old-fashioned. Indeed, it may be considered as a computing device of the preelectronic age.”

Oskar R. Lange (1904–1965) Polish economist

"The computer and the market" (1967)

Age , Error , Fashion , Appearance

“As conscious beings advance in mental growth, they come to recognise that this ideal must embrace not merely their own kin or neighbours, not only their tribe or nation, not only the whole race or species, but all conscious beings whatever, no matter how foreign. It is surely probable that this desire for the fulfilment of personality-in-community plays a very large part in the universe. We must remember, of course, that the particular forms which it may take in different kinds of worlds, up and down the universe, may be utterly alien to our comprehension and appreciation. Or rather, not utterly alien; since, if these arguments are correct, there is an essential underlying kinship and identity in all possible kinds of conscious being.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Source: Philosophy and Living (1939), Chapter VII: Ethics

World , Communication , Universe , Parting

“In sum, therefore, many of the assumptions and analytical frameworks that underpin the instrumental argument for free markets and inequality are either invalid or much weaker than is commonly supposed.”

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell (1955) British businessman

Source: Economics after the crisis : objectives and means (2012), Ch. 1 : Economic Growth, Human Welfare, and Inequality

“Brought up in Tammany Hall, he has learned how to reach the hearts of the great mass of voters. He does not bother about reaching their heads. It is his belief that arguments and campaign literature have never gained votes. p. 91”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 23, Strenuous Life of the Tammany District Leader

Literature , Learning , Heart

“Furthermore there's the whole argument that the administration made, that so many people were killed by chemical weapons. Their number was around 1,400, the fact of the matter is that over 40,000 other people were killed with bombs and bullets, before those 1,400 people. If 40,000 people were killed, and that didn't provide a moral justification for intervention, what's the moral justification for killing people… when 1,400 die with chemical weapons. I don't get it, in fact, I don't think there's a moral case to be made for intervention.”

John Mearsheimer (1947) American political scientist

John Mearsheimer on America Unhinged https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqqzh59sVo provided by the Center for the National Interest. Here Mearsheimer is speaking about the Syrian conflict and potential United States intervention due to the Assad's regime alleged usage of chemical devices.

People , Thinking

“Quoth she, I 've heard old cunning stagers
Say fools for arguments use wagers.”

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

Canto I, line 297
Source: Hudibras, Part II (1664)

Fools

“Law taught me how to argue passionately and rationally. That’s key to being a successful environmental campaigner. If you are too emotional you run the risk of turning off policy makers. And if you can’t present your arguments rationally, no one will listen to you.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

Law , Passion , Success

“The new attitude of the critic toward the artist has been rationalized for me by a leading European art historian who is also an influential critic of current art. It is based on a theory of division of labor in making art history. The historian, he contends, knows art history and, in fact, creates it; the artist knows only how to do things. Left to himself, the artist is almost certain to do the wrong thing — to deviate from the line of art history and thus to plunge into oblivion. The critic's role is to steer him in the proper direction and advise changes in his technique and subject matter that will coordinate his efforts with the forces of development. Better still, critics should formulate historically valid projects for artists to carry out. That not all critics have the same expectations of the future of art does not, I realize, weaken the cogency of my colleague's argument. The surviving artist would be one who has been lucky enough to pick the winning critic. My own view that art should be left to artists seemed to my mentor both out-of-date and irresponsible.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 249, "Thoughts in Off-Season"

Art , History , Effort , Change

“For approximately 500 years [science's] argument for its pre-eminence was that it could create beautiful toys: aircraft, railroads, global economies, television, spacecraft. But that is a fool’s argument for truth! I mean, that’s after all how a medicine show operates, you know: the juggler is so good, the medicine must be even better! This is not an entirely rational way to proceed.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

The World and Its Double

Truth , Beauty , Fools , Way

“It is not, I think, going too far to say, that every fact connected with the human organization goes to prove, that man was originally formed a frugivorous animal … This opinion is principally derived from the formation of his teeth and digestive organs, as well as from the character of his skin, and the general structure of his limbs. It is not my intention now to go further into the discussion of this subject, than to observe, that if analogy be allowed to have any weight in the argument, it is wholly on that side of the question which I have just taken. Those animals, whose teeth and digestive apparatus most nearly resemble our own, namely, the apes and monkeys, are undoubtedly frugivorous.”

Thomas Bell (zoologist)

The Anatomy, Physiology, and Diseases of the Teeth, Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1830, p. 35 https://books.google.it/books?id=LK-_LIeEq2oC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35.

Question , Thinking , Animals

“All arguments based on the unequal status of texts are questionable. In principle, all ancient readings have an equal status, without relation to the text or translation in which they are found.”

Emanuel Tov (1941) Israeli biblical scholar and linguist

Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (2012), p.272

Question , Reading

“When poetry loses its ability to enchant, it shrinks into what is just an elaborate form of argumentation. When verse casts its particular spell, it becomes the most evocative form of language.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)

“I can't control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith. Or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear closing speech (2010)

People , Fear , Faith , Thinking

“No deeply-rooted tendency was ever extirpated by adverse argument. Not having originally been founded on argument, it cannot be destroyed by logic.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

Vol. 1, p. 7
The Foundations of a Creed (1874-5)

“What are the dangers, then, involved in being a celebrity? On the one hand, there's … the true loss of the self by virtue of being over-democratized, over-saturated, over-loved, perhaps. Without an internally directed compass, an ego can drown in its own fascination, rendering the bearer unable to posit or hang anything actual onto themselves. This again is essentially the argument from commodification, which prescribes a kind of a ravenous, ecstatic feast upon a soul until it becomes defined purely in terms of its external ability to in fact be consumed.”

Jack Gleeson (1992) Irish actor

Speech at Oxford Union (2014)

Love , Soul , Loss

“Prior work has shown an association between diversification strategy and profitability. This paper replicates that association using more recent and complete data and goes on to investigate the sources of the association. Theoretical arguments are advanced which predict the association which will remain once the effects of varying industry profitability are removed. Empirical tests verify this prediction and permit the discrimination between the effects of industry and diversification strategy on profitability.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Source: "Diversity and Profitability", 1982, p. 359; Abstract

“Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Source: The Echo of Greece (1957), Chapter 4, "The School Teachers"

God , Reality

“In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (February 23, 1890)
Letters

Suffering , Wealth

“For those who would like to throw off the burden of history and move on, Goldhagen’s book has been a welcome gift. Purporting to bring the past home to the unsuspecting present, he has had the opposite effect. If he has not yet asked himself why his book has received such an enthusiastic reception in Germany, he might ponder why ‘the Germans’ should be so glad to be supplied with the argument that their parents and grandparents were all equally to blame because they inhabited a culture blameworthy in itself: we’re different now. But nobody is that different now, because nobody was that different then.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Postscript to Hitler's Unwitting Exculpator
Essays and reviews, As Of This Writing (2003)

Books , Home , History , Parent

“The argument is that there may be a cluster of genes that influences both outgoingness and musicality. If this were true, we would expect to find that deviations in one ability co-occur with deviations in the other, as we do in WS and ASD.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Music

“It seems that we are revisiting the whole argument about a European central bank. Many of us have the deepest misgivings about the establishment of such a bank, with no accountability to member states and an office life of eight years, in which it can do what it likes, provided that it supports the market economy throughout Europe, despite the social consequences. There is no time limit on the period of office of the political directors, and there is nothing about who they would be or where they would come from. But I ask the quite serious question: what on earth are these political directors to do, where do they come from, to whom are they answerable and how do we get rid of them if we do not like what they do?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1993/mar/30/treaty-on-european-union in the House of Commons (30 March 1993).
1990s

Life , Question , Support , Time

“[The draft] should be called slavery, involuntary servitude.
Howard Phillips: It violates the 13th amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude.
Ron Paul: Yeah, and the argument that I've always resented the most was, if you're 18 year old you owe it to your country. I've always wondered why the guy who's 58 and had a million bucks and hadn't served, why doesn't he owe more to this country, maybe he should be on the frontline. 18 year old didn't get anything yet, and he has to go and risk his life.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Conservative Roundtable, May 1997 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_suZvyB69YM
1990s

Life , Guy , Country

“A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk : How We Defeat Ourselves by the Way We Talk and What to do About It (1976)

“I respect the decision of the Court as everyone else should, whether they agree with or not. Respect for the rule of law demands nothing less. I don't think the statements of President (Rodrigo) Duterte has anything to do with it as I believe in the independence of the Court. I cannot comment on the prosecution given that I am not too learned about the day to day arguments both sides made before the Court.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2016, July 20). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10154259973445610/
2016, Facebook

Law , Thinking , Decision , Learning

“Only virtue has powerful arguments against pessimism.”

Leopoldo Alas (1852–1901) novelist

Sólo la virtud tiene argumentos poderosos contra el pesimismo.
Source: Leopoldo Alas (1975) Solos de Clarín.; Also attributed without citation at Frases Célebres http://frasescelebresmajo.blogspot.com/2011/09/leopoldo-alas-clarin.html

“This they do in the service of an imaginary science; and, like the astrologers and soothsayers whom they have succeeded, cast up their eyes to the clouds, and speak in immense, unsubstantiated images and similes, in deeply misleading metaphors and allegories, and make use of hypnotic formulae with little regard for experience, or rational argument, or tests of proven reliability. Thereby they throw dust in their own eyes as well as in ours, obstruct our vision of the real world, and further confuse an already sufficiently bewildered public about the relations of morality to politics, and about the nature and methods of the natural sciences and historical studies alike.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Historical Inevitability (1954)

World , Nature , Study , Science

“If then the Courts of justice are to be considered as the bulwarks of a limited Constitution, against Legislative encroachments, this consideration will afford a strong argument for the permanent tenure of Judicial offices, since nothing will contribute so much as this to that independent spirit in the Judges, which must be essential to the faithful performance of so arduous a duty. This independence of the Judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals, from the effects of those ill humors, which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the People themselves, and which, though they speedily give place to better information, and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the mean time, to occasion dangerous innovations in the Government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Men , People , Faith , Justice

“"The immutable Russian policy is to get whatever they can with the least possible effort, and then ask for more. They never sacrifice their immediate benefits for future goals. They never take into account what has been said, but what has been done. They try to exact a high price for anything that they understand they have to do in any case. They are immune to ethical, humanitarian and abstract juridical arguments, being affected only by practical and realistic points of view."”

Juho Kusti Paasikivi (1870–1956) 7th President of Finland

Source: Paasikivi in a private letter (1891) from Novgorod, studying Russian culture on a grant.

Understanding , Effort , Future

“As an engineer by training and practice, and as a manufacturer having upwards of thirty-five years of practical experience in industrial management in many phases, I avail myself with pleasure of this opportunity of meeting this large body of students who are preparing themselves for active work in the world, and of submitting for your consideration some suggestions concerning your future work, especially in the field with which I am most familiar and in which some of you, I feel sure, will find your best opportunities, and which will form the topic of my argument, namely, Industrial Engineering”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Lead paragraph
Industrial Engineering, 1905

Pleasure , World , Feeling , Future

“tt>/* This bit of chicanery makes a unary function followed by a parenthesis into a function with one argument, highest precedence. */</tt”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

toke.c
Source code, Other files

“…the following passage from Major Cartwright's Memorandum Book: “On Sunday the 10th of April, 1814, Earl Stanhope informed me that in conversation with Mr. Fox and a third person, Mr. Fox said ‘Parliamentary reform was a fit thing to be made use of in argument in the House of Commons, but not to be carried into execution.’” Lord Stanhope also mentioned the same fact to Major Cartwright's friend, Mr. Holt White, and in the same words.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

F. D. Cartwright (ed.), The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright. Volume I (London: Henry Colburn, 1826), pp. 132-133, n.
Attributed

Books , Housing , Personality

“A theoretical defense of private property as a feature of Natural Law, however, was not fully made until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the age of Jean Bodin and Hugo Grotius. But that the idea occurred to Romans is evident from Cicero’s argument that government could not interfere with private property because it had been created in order to protect it.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), pp. 12-13

Age , Law , Idea , Nature

“It cannot but occur to every person's observation, that as long as parties exist in the country (and perhaps it is for the good of the country that parties should exist to a certain degree, because they keep ministers on their guard in their conduct), they will have their friends and adherents. A great political character, who held a high situation in this country some years ago, but who is now dead, used to say that ministers were the better for being now and then a little peppered and salted. And while these parties exist, they will have their friendships and attainments, which will sometimes dispose them to wander from argument to declamation.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Holt's Case (1793), 22 How. St. Tr. 1234.

Friendship , Personality , Dead , Country

“You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism”. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third—”Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment”, E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.””

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

That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
"Bulverism" (1941)

Truth , Age , World , Parting

“And thus the easy argument of exhibiting the least conditions sufficient for experience, so like a simpleton in its seeming clutch at the thin surface of things, carries in its subtle heart the proof of an imperishable persistence in all that gives life meaning and value.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.312

Life , Heart

“Who overrefines his argument brings himself to grief.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

"Canzone 11 [c. 1327]", as reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1968), p. 163
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

“Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Men

“What upsets me the most is that I was an accountable representative of a system under which people suffered, also under which repression was aimed at individuals, who were persecuted because of their oppositional stance. Their position was the right one. My position was the wrong one. We were not capable of democracy, but rather tried in the absence of better arguments to get rid of the other opinion with direct violence.”

Günter Schabowski (1929–2015) German politician

Am meisten bedrückt mich, dass ich ein verantwortlicher Vertreter eines Systems war, unter dem Menschen gelitten haben, dass Repressionen gegen einzelne Menschen gerichtet waren, die wegen ihrer oppositionellen Haltung verfolgt wurden. Ihre Einstellung war die richtige. Meine Einstellung war die falsche. Wir waren nicht demokratiefähig, sondern haben versucht, mangels besserer Argumente uns der anderen Meinung mittels direkter Gewalt zu entledigen.
[citation needed]

People , Democracy , Suffering

“The arguments for the two substances - mind and body - have, we believe, entirely lost their validity; they are no longer compatible with ascertained science and clear thinking. One substance with two sets of attributes, two sides (a physical and a mental), a double-faced unity, would appear to comply with all the exigencies of the case.”

Alexander Bain (1818–1903) Scottish philosopher and educationalist

Alexander Bain. Mind and Body: The Theories of their Relation (1872), p. 196; as cited in: The Popular Science Monthly http://books.google.com/books?id=sysDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA162, Vol. 27, June 1885, p. 162.

Thinking , Appearance , Science

“Political theorists often fail to appreciate that arguments about how politics ought to be organized typically depend on relational claims involving agents, actions, legitimacy, and ends.”

Ian Shapiro (1956) American political theorist

The Flight from Realityin the Human Science (2005), Chapter 4. Gross Concepts in Political Argument.

Dependency

“I object to a quarrel because it always interrupts an argument.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Magic: A Fantastic Comedy (1913)

“You should knot that a certain Franciscan from France, whose name indeed was Franz, was here not many days since and had such conversation with me concerning the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the adoration of the saints and their intercession for us. He was not able to convince me with the assistance of a single passage of Scripture that the saints do pray for us, as he had with a great deal of assurance boasted he should do. At last he went to Basel, where he recounted the affair in an entirely different way from the reality - in fact he lied about it. So it seemed good to me to let you know about these things that you might not be ignorant of that Cumaean lion, if perchance he should ever turn your way.
There followed within six days another strife with our brethren preachers of the [different orders in Zurich, especially with the Augustinians]. Finally the burgonmaster and the Council appointed for them three commissioners on whom this was enjoined - that Aquinas and the rest of the doctors of that class being put aside they should base their arguments alone upon those sacred writings which are contained in the Bible. This troubled those beasts so much that one brother, the father reader of the order of Preachers [i. e., the Dominicans] cut loose from us, and we wept - as one weeps when a cross-grained and rich stepmother has departed this life. Meanwhile there are those who threaten, but God will turn the evil upon His enemies.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter July 30th to Rhenanus ibid, p.170-171

Life , God , Way , Reality

“Words were no gift, said Haut. They were tangled nets snaring all who ventured into their midst, until an entire people could hang helpless, choking on their own arguments, even as dissolution closed in on all sides.
The Jaghut had rejected that path. Defying the eternal plea for communication among peoples, in the name of understanding, peace or whatever, they had stopped talking, even with each other. And their city was abandoned, home now to a single soul, the Lord of Hate, the one who had laid bare the brutal truth of the future awaiting them all.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Hate , People , Truth , Peace

Jamie Zawinski (1968) American programmer

http://www.jwz.org/doc/markup.html
JWZ
Markup.

People , Motivation , Thinking , Help

“The actual effect of Rawls’s theory is to undercut theoretically any straightforward appeal to egalitarianism. Egalitarianism has the advantage that gross failure to comply with its basic principles is not difficult to monitor, There are, to be sure, well-known and unsettled issues about comparability of resources and about whether resources are really the proper objects for egalitarians to be concerned with, but there can be little doubt that if person A in a fully monetarized society has ten thousand times the monetary resources of person B, then under normal circumstances the two are not for most politically relevant purposes “equal.” Rawls’s theory effectively shifts discussion away from the utilitarian discussion of the consequences of a certain distribution of resources, and also away from an evaluation of distributions from the point of view of strict equality; instead, he focuses attention on a complex counterfactual judgment. The question is not “Does A have grossly more than B?”—a judgment to which within limits it might not be impossible to get a straightforward answer—but rather the virtually unanswerable “Would B have even less if A had less?” One cannot even begin to think about assessing any such claim without making an enormous number of assumptions about scarcity of various resources, the form the particular economy in question had, the preferences, and in particular the incentive structure, of the people who lived in it and unless one had a rather robust and detailed economic theory of a kind that few people will believe any economist today has. In a situation of uncertainty like this, the actual political onus probandi in fact tacitly shifts to the have-nots; the “haves” lack an obvious systematic motivation to argue for redistribution of the excess wealth they own, or indeed to find arguments to that conclusion plausible. They don't in the same way need to prove anything; they, ex hypothesi, “have” the resources in question: “Beati possidentes.””

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Liberalism and its Discontents,” pp. 22-23.
Outside Ethics (2005)

People , Way , Motivation , Failure

“When we look at the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument, it seems on the surface that we are completely full of ourselves and yet at the same time terribly dubious, sometimes completely without hope, and utterly given to embracing our own fallibility as a cause célèbre. We show no faith in ourselves by accepting this idea that we’ve caused Global Warming and still none in the idea that we can stop it. These are hollow beliefs put forth to enrich the power of the few whom offer us the way to salvation.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

The adapability of man to his climate http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/04/07/the-adapability-of-man-to-his-climate/, wattsupwiththat.com, April 7, 2007.
2007

Faith , Hope , Way , Idea

“I know something about how the first encyclopedias were developed in the 18th century. And those encyclopedias almost completely excluded the history of women. And it’s one argument that we make all the time.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wholf, Tracy (May 18, 2014). "'Wikipedian' editor took on website’s gender gap" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/wikipedian-editor-took-wikipedias-gender-gap/. PBS NewsHour (PBS). Retrieved May 19, 2014.

Women , History , Time

“The term ‘kinship’ correctly suggests the existence not only of contemporary relatives but also of ancestors. Indeed, the recent discussion of dynamic capability was prefigured historically, with a variety of terminology, in a number of sources. Perhaps the most directly relevant example among these earlier contributions is Schumpeter’s discussion of the ‘routinization of innovation’ (Schumpeter 1950). Schumpeter’s argument presented, however, an issue that remains central in contemporary discussion of dynamic capability—the possibly problematic character of the claim that there is such a thing as ‘learned competence’ for doingnew things.”

Sidney G. Winter (1935) American economist

Dynamic Capability as a Source of Change, 2008

Learning

“Statistically it is probably the one city in the world where the most people have been killed in arguments over professional athletes.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, (1966)

People , World

“I've been studying radical Islamic thought—specifically, the thinkers who have influenced contemporary radical Muslims. When you read their work, you find that there are no denunciations of modernity, no condemnations of science, no condemnations of freedom. In fact, their whole argument seems to be that the United States—through our support of secular dictators in the region—is denying Muslims freedom and control over their own destiny.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Interview https://www.catholicity.com/commentary/saint-paul/00041.html for CatholiCity (31 January 2007).

Support , Study , Freedom , Science

“Although there are other heresies in The General Theory, along with puzzles, opacities, loose ends, confusions, errors, exaggerations, and anachronisms galore, they do not detract from the book's relevance to our present troubles. Economists may have forgotten The General Theory and moved on, but economics has not outgrown it, or the informal mode of argument that it exemplifies, which can illuminate nooks and crannies that are closed to mathematics. Keynes's masterpiece is many things, but "outdated" it is not.”

Richard A. Posner (1939) United States federal judge

How I Became a Keynesian (2009)

Books , Error , Mathematics

“As I understand the various opinions today: One Justice holds that two-parent notification is unconstitutional (at least in present circumstances) without judicial bypass, but constitutional with bypass […]; four Justices would hold that two-parent notification is constitutional with or without bypass […]; four Justices would hold that two-parent notification is unconstitutional with or without bypass, though the four apply two different standards […]; six Justices hold that one-parent notification with bypass is constitutional, though for two different sets of reasons […]; and three Justices would hold that one-parent notification with bypass is unconstitutional […]. One will search in vain the document we are supposed to be construing for text that provides the basis for the argument over these distinctions and will find in our society’s tradition regarding abortion no hint that the distinctions are constitutionally relevant, much less any indication how a constitutional argument about them ought to be resolved. The random and unpredictable results of our consequently unchanneled individual views make it increasingly evident, Term after Term, that the tools for this job are not to be found in the lawyer’s – and hence not in the judges – workbox. I continue to dissent from this enterprise of devising an Abortion Code, and from the illusion that we have authority to do so.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On whether a state law may require notification of both parents before a minor can obtain an abortion; Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990, concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part), 497 U.S. 417 http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/497/417.html, No. 88-605 ; decided June 25, 1990
1990s

Justice , Search , Understanding , Parent

“The Lee myth. Lee being above slavery, Lee being in fact anti-slavery, is essential to the neo-Confederate argument that it's not about race, it's not about slavery. They've done a very good job of covering up Robert E. Lee's actual positions on this.”

Brooks D. Simpson (1957) American historian

2000s, Intelligence Report: Rebels With A Cause (2000)

“I have never been able to understand women composers who do not wish to be called women composers. I understand their argument but it seems so superficial to me. Our strength lies in our identification with women and music.”

Beth Anderson (1950) American neo-romantic composer

What Makes Music Woman Oriented (1996)

Women , Music , Understanding

“Any intervention now would be a triumph for Germany! A military triumph! A war triumph! Intervention would have been for us a military disaster. Has the Secretary of State for War no right to express an opinion upon a thing which would be a military disaster? That is what I did, and I do not withdraw a single syllable. It was essential. I could tell the hon. Member how timely it was. I can tell the hon. Member it was not merely the expression of my own opinion, but the expression of the opinion of the Cabinet, of the War Committee, and of our military advisers. It was the opinion of every ally. I can understand men who conscientiously object to all wars. I can understand men who say you will never redeem humanity except by passive endurance of every evil. I can understand men, even—although I do not appreciate the strength of their arguments—who say they do not approve of this particular war. That is not my view, but I can understand it, and it requires courage to say so. But what I cannot understand, what I cannot appreciate, what I cannot respect, is when men preface their speeches by saying they believe in the war, they believe in its origin, they believe in its objects and its cause, and during the time the enemy were in the ascendant never said a word about peace; but the moment our gallant troops are climbing through endurance and suffering up the path of ascendancy begin to howl with the enemy.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1916/oct/11/statement-by-prime-minister in the House of Commons (11 October 1916)
Secretary of State for War

Men , War , Peace , Courage

“I finally got tired of making movies where all I did was walk across the screen and look pretty. I got a big chance to do some real acting in The Postman Always Rings Twice, and I'm not going to slip back if I can help it. I tried to persuade the studio to give me something different. But every time I went into my argument about how bad a picture was, they'd say, 'well, it's making a fortune.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

That licked me.
On her experience in the film industry; quoted in MacPherson, Virginia; "Imagine This, Lads; Lana Turner Asks That You Concentrate On Her Acting," Toledo Blade (October 15, 1946).
On her career

Chance , Time , Help

“No anti-porn feminist I know has suggested that there is one image, or even a few, that could lead a non-rapist to rape; the argument, rather, is that taken together, pornographic images create a world that is at best inhospitable to women, and at worst dangerous to their physical and emotional well-being. In an unfair and inaccurate article that is emblematic of how anti-porn feminist work is misrepresented, Daniel Bernardi claims that Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon believed that “watching pornography leads men to rape women.” Neither Dworkin nor MacKinnon “pioneers in developing a radical feminist critique of pornography, saw porn in such simplistic terms. Rather, both argued that porn has a complicated and multilayered effect on male sexuality, and that rape, rather than simply being caused by porn, is a cultural practice that has been woven into the fabric of a male-dominated society. Pornography, they argued, is one important agent of such a society since it so perfectly encodes woman-hating ideology, but to see it as simplistically and unquestionably leading to rape is to ignore how porn operates within the wider context of a society that is brimming with sexist imagery and ideology. If, then, we replace the “Does porn cause rape?” question with more nuanced questions that ask how porn messages shape our reality and our culture, we avoid falling into the images-lead-to-rape discussion. What this reformulation does is highlight the ways that the stories in pornography, by virtue of their consistency and coherence, create a worldview that the user integrates into his reservoir of beliefs that form his ways of understanding, seeing, and interpreting what goes on around him.”

Gail Dines (1958) anti-pornography campaigner

Pornland: How Porn Hijacked Our Sexuality, Ch 5, Page 85, Gail Dines

Women , Men , Hate , World

“If we observe our own minds, we shall notice how easily diverted our thoughts are, how often they behave like undisciplined disputants constantly interrupting each other and refusing to listen to the other side’s arguments.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Vision of Dhamma (1994), p. 75

“The papers should promote minority views as well as mainstream argument and should encourage dissent.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Alan Rusbridger (2008) on The Guardian priorities, cited in: Richard Lance Keeble, John Tulloch, Florian Zollmann (2010) Peace journalism, war and conflict resolution. p. 301.
2000s

Quotes about argument page 8

Quotes about argument
page 8