Argument quotes:

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Argument is conclusive, but it does not remove doubt. -- Roger Bacon
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute. -- Josh Billings
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. -- Winston Churchill
Argument weak; speak loudly! -- Theodore Roosevelt
The Last Argument of Kings. -- Louis XIV
Argument is not always truth. -- Lajos Kossuth
Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding. -- Andre Gide
Debate is the death of conversation. -- Emil Ludwig
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument. -- Samuel Butler
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance. -- Louis D. Brandeis
Argument is the worst sort of conversation. -- Jonathan Swift
Argument is to me the air I breathe. -- Gertrude Stein
Argument should be polite as well as logical. -- Alphonse de Lamartine
Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. -- Victor Hugo
An Argument needs no reason; Nor any friendship. -- Ibycus
The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence. -- Ayn Rand
Argument does not soften, but rather hardens, the obdurate heart. -- Orville Dewey
When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it. -- Edward de Bono
It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them. -- Pierre Beaumarchais
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress. -- Joseph Joubert
I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension. -- Benjamin Disraeli
I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained. -- Tom Stoppard
In arguing one should meet serious pleading with humor, and humor with serious pleading. -- Oliver Goldsmith
Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that. -- Doris Lessing
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. -- Dale Carnegie
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing. -- Franz Kafka
He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak. -- Michel de Montaigne
Argument need not be heated; it can be punctuated with courteous smiles - or sympathetic tears. -- J. Sidlow Baxter
Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear. -- Lord Chesterfield
Argument cannot be answered with insults. Kindness is strength; anger blows out the lamp of the mind. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
When you're in the Middle of an Argument, ask yourself: Do I want to be Right or be Happy? -- Wayne Dyer
When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you. -- Irving Layton
Argument closes off the doors of the senses. It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence. -- Frank Herbert
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading. -- Jonathan Swift
Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it. -- Gertrude Stein
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself. -- Samuel Butler
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. -- James Russell Lowell
I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too. No, sir, these, I protest you, are too hard for me. -- Oliver Goldsmith
Myself when young did eagerly frequent doctor and saint, and heard great argument about it and about: but evermore came out by the same door as in I went. -- Omar Khayyam
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost. -- William Lloyd Garrison
I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me. -- Dave Barry
Where we desire to be informed 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own. -- Thomas Browne
Silence is argument carried out by other means. -- Che Guevara
Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions. -- Booth Tarkington
For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate. -- Margaret Heffernan
Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion. -- Marilyn vos Savant
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. -- Leonardo da Vinci
A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better. -- Stephen Leacock
I became the stage for the great argument between Nietzsche and Rousseau. I was the extra ready to take on all the roles. -- Jacques Derrida
But, you know, there's still an argument, there's still ten states that outlaw premarital sex, and many more states where adultery is still outlawed and a crime. -- Liam Neeson
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy? -- George Orwell
A dark cloud is no sign that the sun has lost his light; and dark black convictions are no arguments that God has laid aside His mercy. -- Charles Spurgeon
You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink. -- Carl Hiaasen
Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers. -- William Penn
We run into some pretty tough arguments sometimes, but the idea is that at the end of the day, my wife and I realize that we'll always be holding each other's hand. -- Kyle Chandler
Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the 'slippery slope': once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die. -- Peter Singer
John Foster Dulles had called on me in his capacity as Secretary of State, and he had exhausted every argument to persuade me to place Cambodia under the protection of the South East Asia Treaty Organization. -- Norodom Sihanouk
The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning. -- Aristotle
The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument. -- Eliot Spitzer
It does surprise me that intelligent people in the 21st century could claim that if you respond to the terrorists with force, you spawn terrorism, but if you appease them, you somehow tame them. This argument, as I said, is very interesting, and very surprising. -- Meles Zenawi
Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples? -- Ted Olson
Tolerance, openness to argument, openness to self-doubt, willingness to see other people's points of view - these are very liberal and enlightened values that people are right to hold, but we can't allow them to delude us to the point where we can't recognise people who are needlessly perpetrating human misery. -- Sam Harris
Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty. -- Eliot Spitzer
I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone. -- David Sedaris
When I have an argument with someone, even with someone I am not very close with, I can't sleep at night thinking about it. It's terrible. But I still manage speak out frankly because I have also been gifted with the ability to read people. I can sense when they start to get irritated with me, and then, I shift. -- Hans Rosling
You have two choices with Obama. You either believe that he is a man of Christ... or you think he's a liar. And I'm surprised by the number of atheist free thinkers that support Obama, and their argument is essentially, 'He's lying about being religious 'cause you have to do that to get elected.' It's a horrible reason to like somebody. -- Penn Jillette
Clear statement is argument. -- William Greenough Thayer Shedd
Scholarship is polite argument. -- Philip Rieff
Insight makes argument ridiculous. -- John Lancaster Spalding
My life is my argument. -- Albert Schweitzer
The final argument of kings -- Louis XIV
Let argument bear no unmusical sound. -- Ben Jonson
A gun is not an argument. -- Ayn Rand
Convincing yourself doesn't win an argument. -- Robert Half
Without argument the species would parish. -- Gerry Spence
We must reinforce argument with results. -- Booker T. Washington
Follow the argument wherever it leads. -- Socrates
Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument. -- Rufus Choate
Truth springs from argument amongst friends. -- David Hume
Sophistry is the fallacy of argument. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Let your life be your argument. -- Albert Schweitzer
History is an argument without end. -- Pieter Geyl
Love is a very compelling argument. -- Brian Houston
The argument is at an end. -- Saint Augustine
Win through your actions, never through argument. -- Robert Greene
Good argument is intended to persuade another. -- Barry Eisler
God's Word is its own best argument. -- Vance Havner
The climate change argument is absolute crap -- Tony Abbott
Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent. -- Thomas Hobbes
History is, indeed, an argument without end. -- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken. -- Bertrand Russell
The truth is always the strongest argument. -- Sophocles
The idea comes before the logical argument. -- Gerald Abrahams
A good life is a main argument. -- Ben Jonson
Your argument is sound, nothing but sound. -- Benjamin Franklin
Keep cool; anger is not an argument. -- Daniel Webster
An argument which proves too much, proves nothing. -- M. M. Mangasarian
To every argument an equal argument is opposed, -- Sextus Empiricus
The reductio ad absurdum is God's favorite argument. -- George Tyrrell
You are the strongest argument, yet, against cloning. -- Patricia Richardson
Who over-refines his argument brings himself to grief -- Petrarch
The best argument is an undeniably good book. -- Saul Bellow
Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A good action is preferable to an argument. -- Voltaire
I never remember my parents having an argument. -- Brunello Cucinelli
When God says something, the argument is over. -- R. C. Sproul
One can never win an argument with ignorance. -- Wes Fesler
America is the longest argument in the world. -- Bill Moyers
The written argument endures. The oral argument is fleeting. -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument. -- Thomas Sowell
Since when was an emotional argument won by logic? -- Robert A. Heinlein
... so far as religion is concerned, argument is adjourned. -- Woodrow Wilson
You could start an argument in an empty house. -- Jill Shalvis
Most people go not by argument, but by sympathies. -- John Henry Newman
The best argument for anarchism is the twentieth century. -- Joseph Sobran
It was an argument of rare power and eloquence. -- William Henry Moody
Reasonable argument is impossible when authority becomes the arbiter. -- Orson Scott Card
If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument. -- Edward St Aubyn

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