quotations about arguments & arguing
In argument
Similes are like songs in love:
They must describe; they nothing prove.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Alma
If ifs and ands were pots and pans
There'd be no work for the tinkers.
ROBERT BLACKHOUSE PEACOCK
A glossary of the dialect of the hundred of Lonsdale
Slow to argue, but quick to act.
BRET HARTE
John Burns of Gettysburg
Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be
Others will go on speaking and you will not be able to argue back
RAM MOHAN ROY
attributed, Africa Quarterly, 2006
And while I at length debate and beat the bush,
There shall step in other men and catch the birds.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.
MILAN KUNDERA
Encounter
No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.
WILKIE COLLINS
The Woman in White
There are two sides to every question.
PROTAGORAS
Protagoras
Much virtue in If.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
Argument is a gift of Nature.
CHARLES DICKENS
Barnaby Rudge
We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own.
JOSEPH JOUBERT
Pensées
To make the weaker argument the stronger.
PLATO
Apology of Socrates
In arguing, answer your opponent's earnest with jest and his jest with earnest.
ARISTOTLE
Rhetoric
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
J.R. LOWELL
Democracy and Other Addresses
So high at last the contest rose,
From words they almost came to blows.
JAMES MERRICK
The Chameleon
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
JOHN MORLEY
On Compromise
Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself, in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance.
SADI
Gulistan
The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge -- much older than the desire for truth -- to command attention.
BARRY UNSWORTH
Sacred Hunger
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACRE
Bad Science
Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won't?
L.J. SMITH
Nightfall