quotations about arguments & arguing
If he take you in hand, sir, with an argument,
He'll bray you in a mortar.
BEN JONSON
The Alchemist
Much virtue in If.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
One single positive weighs more,
You know, than negatives a score.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd
The quiet shaft of ridicule oftimes does more than argument.
WILLIAM SCARBOROUGH
attributed, And I Quote
When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.
C.S. FORESTER
The African Queen
Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself, in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance.
SADI
Gulistan
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACRE
Bad Science
And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
And friendly free discussion, calling forth
From the fair jewel, Truth, its latent ray.
JAMES THOMSON
Liberty
Argument is a gift of Nature.
CHARLES DICKENS
Barnaby Rudge
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
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 have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
JOHN MORLEY
On Compromise
Brief and bitter the debate.
ROBERT BROWNING
Hervé Riel
Debate destroys despatch.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Never maintain an argument with heat and clamour, though you think or know yourself to be in the right.
LORD CHESTERFIELD
letter, October 16, 1747
This is no time nor fitting place to mar
The mirthful meeting with a wordy war.
LORD BYRON
Lara
We may convince others by our arguments; but we can only persuade them by their own.
JOSEPH JOUBERT
Pensées
You are fond of argument, and now you fancy that I am a bag full of arguments.
SOCRATES
Theaetetus