Debate Quotes

Sourced

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.
o Gertrude Stein
o First written as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College (1895); “The Radcliffe Manuscripts”, Form and Intelligibility (1949)

Ignorantia non est argumentum.
o Translation: Ignorance is no argument.
o Baruch Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata et in quinque parses distincta, Part 1, Addendum; Amsterdam, 1677.
o Originally used to oppose traditional theological views that everything exists and is determined by divine intervention because no other plausible reason or explanation is seen.

Unsourced

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle it without debate.
o Joseph Joubert

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
o Jonathan Swift

Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance.
o Louis Brandeis

The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the right.
o Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone

Debate is the death of conversation.
o Emil Ludwig

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
o Michel de Montaigne

A long dispute means both parties are wrong.
o Voltaire

Never contend with one that is foolish, proud, positive, testy, or with a superior, or a clown, in matter of argument.
o Thomas Fuller

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
o Gilbert K. Chesterton

The purely agitational attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.
o Jawaharlal Nehru

Weak arguments are often thrust before my path; but although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut through a cushion with a sword.
o Richard Whately

When much dispute has past, We find our tenets just the same as last.
o Alexander Pope