Quotations on Argument

A long dispute means both parties are wrong.

~ Voltaire

Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

~ Wendell Phillips

Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When much dispute has past,
We find our tenets just the same as last.

~ Alexander Pope

Never contend with one that is foolish, proud, positive, testy, or with a superior, or a clown, in matter of argument.

~ Thomas Fuller

When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument.

~ Virginia Woolf

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

My dear sir, they don't debate. Each of them merely issues an ultimatum, and in what a tone! It all goes to show what extraordinary people they are, each more unequivocal than the other.

~ Colette

- The Old Lady and the Bear

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

~ David Hume

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.

~ Jonathan Swift

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.

~ Jonathan Swift

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

~ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

~ Louis D. Brandeis

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

~ Michel de Montaigne

Weak arguments are often thrust before my path; but although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut through a cushion with a sword.

~ Richard Whately

The purely agitational attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.

~ Jawaharlal Nehru

The sounder your argument, the more satisfaction you get out of it.

~ Ed Howe

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

~ Matthew Prior

Debate is the death of conversation.

~ Emil Ludwig

The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the right.

~ Lord Hailsham

Any fact is better established by two or three good testimonies than by a thousand arguments.

~ Nathaniel Emmons