quotations about arguments & arguing
We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own.
JOSEPH JOUBERT
Pensées
We should not investigate facts by the light of arguments, but arguments by the light of facts.
MYSON
attributed, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much as the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life of Samuel Johnson
A noisy man is always in the right.
WILLIAM COWPER
Conversations
And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
One single positive weighs more,
You know, than negatives a score.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd
To make the weaker argument the stronger.
PLATO
Apology of Socrates
Testimony is like the shot of a long-bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-bow, equally forcible whether discharged by a giant or a dwarf.
ROBERT BOYLE
attributed, A Treatise on Facts as Subjects of Inquiry by a Jury
I am not arguing with you--I am telling you.
J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
There are two sides to every question.
PROTAGORAS
Protagoras
This is no time nor fitting place to mar
The mirthful meeting with a wordy war.
LORD BYRON
Lara
So high at last the contest rose,
From words they almost came to blows.
JAMES MERRICK
The Chameleon
There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Origins of Totalitarianism
Debate destroys despatch.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
A dispute begun in jest ... is continued by the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into enmity.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, No. 23
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACRE
Bad Science
Altogether they puzzle me quite,
They all seem wrong and they all seem right.
ROBERT BUCHANAN
Fine Weather on the Digentia
The most important tactic in an argument next to being right is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face.
STEPHEN JAY GOULD
attributed, goodreads
Last night we had an argument
Oh, oh, yes we did
Although baby, the things I said
I never meant
SMOKEY ROBINSON
"We've Come Too Far to End It Now"