Argumentation Quotes

“Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn’t mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute.”
― Max Barry, Lexicon

“It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“Psychobabble attempts to redefine the entire English language just to make a correct statement incorrect. Psychology is the study of why someone would try to do this.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“لو أن لبائع اللب قدرة على الجدل لدلل على أنه يلعب دوراً خطيراً في حياة البشر، ولا يبعد أن يكون لكل شيئ قيمة ذاتية ولا يبعد كذلك ألا يكون لشيئ قيمة البتة، كم مليوناً من البشر يلفظون أنفاسهم في هذه اللحظة؟ في الوقت نفسه يرتفع صوت طفل بالبكاء على فقد لعبة، أو صوت عاشق يبث الليل والكون متاعب قلبه، أأضحك أم أبكي؟”
― نجيب محفوظ, Sugar Street

“The only way to efficiently battle evil is to copy enough to know how to counter each argument, yet not enough to believe all the bullshit.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't) 'if by the 1990s [Hitchens] was morphing into someone I didn’t quite recognize”, Blumenthal recalls with horror the night that I 'gave' a farewell party for Martin Walker of the Guardian, and then didn't attend it because I wanted to be on television instead. This is easy: Martin had asked to use the fine lobby of my building for a farewell bash, and I'd set it up. People have quite often asked me to do that. My wife did the honors after Nightline told me that I’d have to come to New York if I wanted to abuse Mother Teresa and Princess Diana on the same show. Of all the people I know, Martin Walker and Sidney Blumenthal would have been the top two in recognizing that journalism and argument come first, and that there can be no hard feelings about it. How do I know this? Well, I have known Martin since Oxford. (He produced a book on Clinton, published in America as 'The President We Deserve'. He reprinted it in London, under the title, 'The President They Deserve'. I doffed my hat to that.) While Sidney—I can barely believe I am telling you this—once also solicited an invitation to hold his book party at my home. A few days later he called me back, to tell me that Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic, had insisted on giving the party instead. I said, fine, no bones broken; no caterers ordered as yet. 'I don't think you quite get it,' he went on, after an honorable pause. 'That means you can't come to the party at all.' I knew that about my old foe Peretz: I didn't then know I knew it about Blumenthal. I also thought that it was just within the limit of the rules. I ask you to believe that I had buried this memory until this book came out, but also to believe that I won't be slandered and won't refrain—if motives or conduct are in question—from speculating about them in my turn.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“One can indeed try to obtain a particular result either by the use of violence or by speech aimed at securing the adherence of minds. It is in terms of this alternative that the opposition between spiritual freedom and constraint is most clearly seen. The use of argumentation implies that one has renounced resorting to force alone, that value is attached to gaining the adherence of one's interlocutor by means of reasoned persuasion, and that one is not regarding him as an object, but appealing to his free judgment. Recourse to argumentation assumes the establishment of a community of minds, which, while it lasts, excludes the use of violence.”
― Chaim Perelman

“Repetition of an argument proves your determination, not truth.”
― Raheel Farooq, Kalam

“It's the golden glint of a kind heart that nourishes the fabric of society, not the scorching heat of argumentation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“One surefire way to fail to overcome an objection is to dismiss it out of hand.”
― Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

“More we argue over logic and belief, more impotent logic and belief become.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“And soon after I procured Xenophons memorable things of Socrates, wherein there are many examples of the same method [socratic method]. I was charged with it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquire. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury in Collins, made a doubter, as I already was in many points of our religious doctrines, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore, I took a delight in it, practiced it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.”
― Benjamin Franklin, [(The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin )] [Author: Benjamin Franklin] [Jun-2013]

“The philosophical problem is to explain, not to describe, as science does, the nature of things. Philosophy asks about more than the connections of phenomena. It seeks to penetrate to the ultimate causes and conditions that underlie them. Such problems are satisfactorily explored only when the answers to them are supported by clear arguments and analysis. [How to Read a Book (1972), P. 282-3]”
― Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

“Generally speaking, the apparent lack of argumentation in some traditional Chinese texts doesn't mean that they don't contain argumentation. Rather, they may have simply skipped many argumentation steps and offered instead an 'argumentation sketch', or the key and most difficult steps in an argumentation. In fact, even in works of physics and mathematics that are known for their rigor, argumentation steps are often skipped, and the failure of a reader to understand them if often not a sign of a lack of rigor of the works in question but the lack of the reader's competence in becoming a good physicist or mathematician. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it in his discussion of the beauty of the aphoristic style, 'In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that one must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks - and those who are addressed, tall and lofty' (1954, 40 [ part 1, sec. 7,'On Reading and Writing']).”
― Tongdong Bai, Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case

“If arguments could convince humans, there would be no arguments at all.”
― Raheel Farooq, Why I Am a Muslim: And a Christian and a Jew

“Forget the argumentation of logic over what is possible and what is not - action in the course of humaneness should be our prime directive, not argumentation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sleepless for Society

“I don't have time for mystical nonsense, I don't have time for intellectual argumentation - real problems of the world keep me busy enough.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“I avoid argumentation with bigots, not because I'm afraid of them, but because I'm terrified of my own anger.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“It’s more important to be kind than right. Sometimes to be human you gotta lose the fight.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervish Advaitam: Gospel of Sacred Feminines and Holy Fathers

“Context constitutes 90 % of a message, words only 10 %.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Be brave enough to belittle your belief, before you belittle a person.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amor Apocalypse: Canım Sana İhtiyacım

“If we know we are going to be rebuked anyhow, isn’t it far better to beat the other person to it and do it ourselves”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

“Argumentation without empathy is just hate speech.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“It was as though they spoke, spat, argued for the mere purpose of breaking the silence.”
― Cora McComiskey, Untitled Observations: and other fictional stories

“Philosophy means intellect, reasoning, thinking, argumentativeness. This is the way to be wrong, because you cannot be in love with existence if you are argumentative. Argument is the barrier. If you argue, you are closed; the whole existence closes to you. Then you are not open and existence is not open to you. When you argue, you assert. Assertion is violence, aggression, and the truth cannot be known by an aggressive mind; the truth cannot be discovered by violence. You can come to know the truth only when you are in love. But love never argues.”
― Osho, Bird on a Wing