Quotes about Argument

'In his celebrated book, 'On Liberty', the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is "a peculiar evil." If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the "opportunity of exchanging error for truth"; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in its "collision with error." If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that: it becomes stale, soon learned by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.'

'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply interrupted her.
'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that -- '
'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen.  'Why, don't you see, child -- ' here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation. 

It takes two to quarrel, but only one to end it.

The terminology of philosophical art is coercive: arguments are powerful and best when they are knockdown, arguments force you to a conclusion, if you believe the premises you have to or must believe the conclusion, some arguments do not carry much punch, and so forth.  A philosophical argument is an attempt to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to believe it or not.  A successful philosophical argument, a strong argument, forces someone to a belief.

Though philosophy is carried on as a coercive activity, the penalty philosophers wield is, after all, rather weak.  If the other person is willing to bear the label of "irrational" or "having the worse arguments," he can skip away happily maintaining his previous belief.

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

This is chiefly practicable in a dispute between scholars in the presence of the unlearned. If you have no argument ad rem, and none either ad hominem, you can make one ad auditores; that is to say, you can start some invalid objection, which, however, only an expert sees to be invalid. Now your opponent is an expert, but those who form your audience are not, and accordingly in their eyes he is defeated; particularly if the objection which you make places him in any ridiculous light. People are ready to laugh, and you have the laughers on your side. To show that your objection is an idle one, would require a long explanation on the part of your opponent, and a reference to the principles of the branch of knowledge in question, or to the elements of the matter which you are discussing; and people are not disposed to listen to it. For example, your opponent states that in the original formation of a mountain-range the granite and other elements in its composition were, by reason of their high temperature, in a fluid or molten state; that the temperature must have amounted to some 480 degrees Fahrenheit; and that when the mass took shape it was covered by the sea. You reply, by an argument ad auditores, that at that temperature - nay, indeed, long before it had been reached, namely, at 212 degrees Fahrenheit - the sea would have been boiled away, and spread through the air in the form of steam. At this the audience laughs. To refute the objection, your opponent would have to show that the boiling-point depends not only on the degree of warmth, but also on the atmospheric pressure; and that as soon as about half the sea-water had gone off in the shape of steam, this pressure would be so greatly increased that the rest of it would fail to boil even at a temperature of 480 degrees. He is debarred from giving this explanation, as it would require a treatise to demonstrate the matter to those who had no acquaintance with physics.

You can't reason someone out of an argument they didn't reason themselves in

The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong. This is bad. Worse, if they got away with it when they were young (say, because they were smarter than their parents, their friends, and their parent’s friends) they’ve probably built an ego around being right, and will therefore defend their perfect record of invented righteousness to the death. Smart people often fall into the trap of preferring to be right even if it’s based in delusion, or results in them, or their loved ones, becoming miserable. (Somewhere in your town there is a row of graves at the cemetery, called smartypants lane, filled with people who were buried at poorly attended funerals, whose headstones say “Well, at least I was right.”)

Until they come face to face with someone who is tenacious enough to dissect their logic, and resilient enough to endure the thinly veiled intellectual abuse they dish out during debate (e.g. “You don’t really think that do you?” or “Well if you knew the <insert obscure reference here> rule/law/corollary you wouldn’t say such things”), they’re never forced to question their ability to defend bad ideas. Opportunities for this are rare: a new boss, a new co-worker, a new spouse. But if their obsessiveness about being right is strong enough, they’ll reject those people out of hand before they question their own biases and self-manipulations. It can be easier for smart people who have a habit of defending bad ideas to change jobs, spouses, or cities rather than honestly examine what is at the core of their psyche (and often, their misery).

You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.

Once the decision has been made, close your ear even to the best counter argument: sign of a strong character. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.

Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it -- immediately.

Zacharia Johnson argued that the new Constitution could never result in religious persecution or other oppression because: The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. . . . These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. . . . I always rested on the following argument. . . We look up to the sky and see the sun. Our eyes are dazzled and our senses record the fact. So here is this great sun standing apparently on no better foundation than our physical senses. But happily there is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing the reality of the sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes of mathematics, entirely separate from the senses, astronomers are able to calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black spot will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense of sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated. So here you have the evidence of the senses reinforced by the entirely separate evidence of a vast independent process of mathematical reasoning. We have taken what is called in military map-making "a cross bearing." . . . When my metaphysical friends tell me that the data on which the astronomers made their calculations, were necessarily obtained originally through the evidence of the senses, I say, "no." They might, in theory at any rate, be obtained by automatic calculating-machines set in motion by the light falling upon them without admixture of the human senses at any stage. When it is persisted that we should have to be told about the calculations and use our ears for that purpose, I reply that the mathematical process has a reality and virtue in itself, and that once discovered it constitutes a new and independent factor. I am also at this point accustomed to reaffirm with emphasis my conviction that the sun is real, and also that it is hot - in fact hot as Hell, and that if the metaphysicians doubt it they should go there and see.

Don't argue about difficulties. The difficulties will argue for themselves.

In exposition and in argument, the writer must likewise never lose his hold upon the concrete; and even when he is dealing with general principles, he must furnish particular instances of their application.

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.

The enemies of Freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them.

Empirical confirmation of Darwin's theory did not prove forthcoming in the first few decades following its publication. Indeed, by the early twentieth century, many noted naturalists had come to regard Darwin's account of evolution by natural selection as a theoretical failure. Some even described their continuing commitment to evolution as a matter of faith, rather an ironic justification in light of the impending Scopes trial of 1925. "I suppose that everyone is familiar in outline with the theory of the origin of species which Darwin promulgated. Through the last fifty years this theme of the natural selection of favored races has been developed and expounded in writings innumerable. Favored races certainly can replace others. The argument is sound, but we are doubtful of its value. For us that debate stands adjourned. We go to Darwin for his incomparable collection of facts. We would fain emulate his scholarship, his width and his power of exposition, but to us he speaks no more with philosophical authority. We read his scheme of evolution as we would those of Leucretius or of Lamarck, delighting in their simplicity and courage." "Modern research lends not the smallest encouragement or sanction to the view that gradual evolution occurs by the transformation of masses of individuals, though that fancy has fixed itself on popular imagination."

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

Men argue; nature acts.

God does nothing vain. When He gives a power, it is for a purpose, it is that it may reach an end. Now what I argue is this: Since He has put in my soul a germ that can grow to eternity, He means that it shall grow to eternity. -Author Unknown

The Government contends . . . that the earliest Congresses enacted statutes that required the participation of state officials in the implementation of federal laws . . . we do not think the early statues imposing obligations on state courts imply a power of Congress to impress the state executive into its service. Indeed, it can be argued that the numerousness of these statutes, contrasted with the utter lack of statutes imposing obligations on the States' executive (notwithstanding the attractiveness of that course to Congress), suggests an assumed absence of such power. . . . To complete the historical record, we must note that there is not only an absence of executive commandeering statutes in the early Congress, but there is an absence of them in our later history as well, at least until very recent years.

If you really want the last word in an argument, try saying, 'I guess you're right.'

I know the argument friend. It's the great theory of history. I've heard it before. It says when things ain't good, instead of getting down and doing something about it, instead of changing your life, it's a hell of a lot easier to blame somebody else. And it just don't wash in my book.