quotations about arguments & arguing
His conduct still right, with his argument wrong.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Retaliation
Though his tongue
Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
The best way of answering a bad argument is not to stop it, but to let it go on in its course till it leaps over the boundaries of common sense.
SYDNEY SMITH
"Spring Guns and Man Traps"
To strive with an equal is a doubtful thing to do; with a superior, a mad thing; with an inferior, a vulgar thing.
SENECA
De Ira
Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Some Mistakes of Moses
In argument
Similes are like songs in love:
They must describe; they nothing prove.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Alma
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
I've heard old sunning stagers
Say, fools for arguments use wagers.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
And while I at length debate and beat the bush,
There shall step in other men and catch the birds.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
JOHN MILTON
Areopagitica
Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Life of Samuel Johnson
Let thy tongue tang with arguments of state.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Twelfth Night
The quiet shaft of ridicule oftimes does more than argument.
WILLIAM SCARBOROUGH
attributed, And I Quote
Argument is a gift of Nature.
CHARLES DICKENS
Barnaby Rudge
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 judgements below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
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
If he take you in hand, sir, with an argument,
He'll bray you in a mortar.
BEN JONSON
The Alchemist
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.
OSCAR WILDE
The Critic as Artist
It's a strange truth that no matter how persuaded we might be of our own correctness, the discomfiting realization that others disagree with us causes a paralyzing inability to argue the case convincingly.
BRITTNEY RYAN
The Legend of Holly Claus
We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own.
JOSEPH JOUBERT
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