“I feel as if dystopian and utopian representations are historically the most effective way of criticizing modern society. You know, because you don't have to be factually accurate. You can kind of construct some awesome strawman arguments in your fictional world.” WorldKindModernArgumentCriticizeRepresentationDystopianUtopianModern Society Author:Owen Pallett
“I think the way that I delivered my request for acting was undeniable, and I think that I was blessed enough to have parents who saw it as something that there was no argument about. For that, I will always be grateful.” ThinkingEnoughParentActingArgumentBlessedGratefulBe Grateful Author:Nina Arianda
“The question is: exactly how did life get here? Was it by natural selection and random mutation or was it by something else? Everybody - even Richard Dawkins - sees design in biology. You see this design when you see co-ordinated parts coming together to perform a function - like in a hand. And so it's the appearance of design that everybody's trying to explain. So that if Darwin's theory doesn't explain it we're left with no other explanation than maybe it really was designed. That's essentially the design argument.” TryingTogetherNaturalDesignArgumentAppearanceExplanationBiologyNatural Selection Author:Michael Behe
“If you go to the right conservative places you'll find there's a huge argument about this among conservatives, particularly the conservative elites and the conservative intellectuals. There's always an argument among our people over who's the smartest person in the room and they're always trying to outsmart each other with the fanciest smartest most obscure argument. The fact is these arguments are taking place within the conservative movement I think quite a lot.” PeopleThinkingTryingArgumentConservativeObscure Author:Rush Limbaugh
“I find myself speaking through the other characters, putting ideas in their voices and heads. Writing almost becomes a splitting of myself into multiple personalities. But I don't write to make an argument on behalf of any of the characters, or to prove anything about a character. I think that's important that I be serving the story first and not my own point of view.” ThinkingWritingImportantCharacterPersonalityProveArgumentPoint Of ViewMultipleMultiple Personalities Author:Danzy Senna
“I'd love if people relearned the lessons of the 20th century all over again. Which is to say this country progressed economically and socially when we had a better balance between capital and labor. Neither capital or labor won every argument. The battle between the two created economic tension, and transformed the working class into the middle class, and grew the economy.” PeopleCountryEconomyEconomicBalanceBattleArgumentLaborTensionMiddle ClassWorking Class20th Century Author:David Simon
“I like it when people are opinionated. I like an opinion. I like people that will fight for their opinion 'til an argument and through an argument. When they believe in something, they fight for it. I like those people that are perhaps sometimes too full of life - perhaps it's very difficult to be around them; they're not easy going. But I like being around people like that.” PeopleBelieveSometimesFightingEasyDifficultOpinionArgumentEasy Going Author:Tom Odell
“If you and I are not having a dialogue, when you're having an argument, the reason the argument happen is because we are not listening to each other. Then, the argument comes in, but if we truly listen instead of hearing, argument will not happen. Then, we'll empathize, and then once the empathy kicks in, you will be much more inclining with my viewpoint and I'll be inclining with your viewpoint, and that's what is missing in organizations.” ReasonMissingListeningEmpathyArgumentDialogue Author:Subir Chowdhury
“In our society, talking about sex is still a taboo, and of course many village chiefs don't want to hear about that issue. "You are trying to deviate us from our way of life, our traditions." And of course the argument they give is that these traditions date back to before our birth, and actually they accuse us of being funded by the outside world to subvert their way of life.” WorldGivingTryingBirthArgumentTraditionTaboo Author:Ousmane Sembene
“Leaders may recognize that they are not addressing the real problems, but they rationalize their actions with the argument that they must first politically survive in order to later address the hard problems and sacrifices. Of course, they usually don't ever actually get around to addressing the fundamental problems later, either because they don't make it through the initial crisis or because, even later, they are not willing to risk sacrificing their own position or "career" with needed measures that usually require tough sacrifices by the population.” RealProblemActionLeaderRiskSacrificeToughArgumentCrisis Author:Arthur Demarest
“I did a film about child abuse with the great producer-director Richard Donner, Radio Flyer. Again, I was replacing somebody, but Lorraine Bracco was in it, and they wanted me as the cop in the thing to fall in love with Lorraine, but I said I wouldn't. I mean, I'm a cop, and she's ignoring that her kids are being beaten up by their stepfather. And we had an argument... well, not an argument, but a discussion about it. I said, "I just don't feel right. It's like you're taking everything away from the reality of the movie. Aren't you kind of idealizing this a little bit?” KindMeanChildrenRealityKidsFilmFallLike YouArgumentAbuseFalling In LoveDiscussionChild AbuseCop Author:John Heard
“Whenever Muslim women protest and ask for their rights, they are silenced with the argument that the laws are justified under Islam. It is an unfounded argument. It is not Islam at fault, but rather the patriarchal culture that uses its own interpretations to justify whatever it wants. It utilizes psychology to say that women are emotional. It utilizes medical science to say that men's brains are formed in such a way that they are better able to understand concepts. These are all hypotheses. None of this has been proven.” CultureBrainPsychologyEmotionalArgumentIslamMedicalJustifyProtestJustified Author:Shirin Ebadi
“It's perfectly OK that there are certain people who do not accept Islam at all. Therefore, to announce that I am a Muslim can rub some people the wrong way. But my aim is to show that those governments that violate the rights of people by invoking the name of Islam have been misusing Islam. They violate these rights and then seek refuge behind the argument that Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy. But this is basically to save face. In fact, I'm promoting democracy. And I'm saying that Islam is not an excuse for thwarting democracy.” PeopleAcceptingDemocracyArgumentAimIslamExcuseRefuge Author:Shirin Ebadi
“I rely heavily on Thomas Sowell's magnificent book, Black Rednecks, White Liberals. He points out that blacks in the North perform better, academically, than whites in the South where they did not have much of an emphasis on learning. But please note that I'm not the one making that argument in that section about Michael Moore. And by the way, I'm not a man. White men have done a lot. It's silly to write a book titled, Stupid White Men.” MenWritingBookDoneBlackStupidArgumentSillyRelyMagnificentRedneck Author:Ann Coulter
“I am aware of existing in a nearly constant state of inner turmoil and argument. I become frustrated with my work when the solution to a creative impasse seems like a secret I don't want to tell myself. It's not that I lose faith in my work - I'm fairly certain the answers are there, but much of my energy is spent beating my psyche into revealing them.” EnergySecretCreativeSolutionsArgumentFrustrated Author:Phoebe Gloeckner
“In fact, one of the arguments for searching for intelligent life in space, elsewhere, is that we have no evidence that intelligence has any survival value. The most successful creatures on this planet are the cockroaches. They've been around, what is it, 100 million years or so and I suspect they'll still be there 100 million years in the future. Maybe intelligence is an evolutionary aberration which dooms its possessors in the way armor may have doomed some of the dinosaurs.” ValuesSuccessfulSurvivalEvidenceArgumentIntelligentElsewhereDoomIntelligent Life Author:Arthur C. Clarke
“I do get stressed at times, but I love what I do as an actor. This is the part that I don't like. I don't actually like talking about - I wish I could just go and get on with my job, because I love getting a script, breaking it down, working with other people, bonding with other people, fighting with other people, and out of those arguments, creating something that nobody expected and seeing it all come together. Telling a story, having an impact on people's lives, moving them and making them laugh.” PeopleTogetherMovingFightingWishLaughingArgumentStressed Author:Gerard Butler
“In the early fight for women's rights, the point was not that women were morally superior or better. The conversation was about the difference between men and women - power, privilege, voting rights, etc. Unfortunately, it quickly moved to the "women are better" argument. If this were true in life or in fiction, we wouldn't have any dark or deep characters. We wouldn't have any Salomes, Carmens, Ophelias. We wouldn't have any jealousy or passion.” MenCharacterFightingPassionDarkMen And WomenArgumentMovedVotingRight To VoteOphelia Author:Margaret Atwood
“I think that as poets, we can get away with stuff because we can ride on the melt of metaphor. We cover a lot of terrain psychically and temporally and linguistically via metaphor, and that can be a stand-in for an argument, whereas in prose, you have to make the argument, and you have to be convincing because the sequence must make sense in time and purpose.” ThinkingPurposePoetArgumentMetaphorMake SenseProseGet AwayConvincing Author:David Biespiel
“If you just try to make rational arguments about why people should care about Congo and how 5 million people have died, then people tend not to be receptive. But once you've created a connection of empathy, rational arguments can play a supportive role.” PeopleTryingCareEmpathyArgumentRationalSupportiveCongo Author:Nicholas D. Kristof
“I actually have to consciously stay away from CNN and MSNBC because it will rot my brain and start having me agree with them as they have an argument between the right and the far right while making it seem they are righteous torch-bearers for democracy. Corporate media is insidiously numbing!” BrainDemocracyArgumentAgreeRighteous Author:Eddie Pepitone
“Some of my understanding of what philosophy and ethics is has changed very slowly. One thing that has changed is this for quite a long time I bought-into the idea that philosophy is basically about arguments. I'm increasingly of the view that it isn't. The most interesting things in philosophy aren't arguments. The thing that I think is underestimated is what I call a form of attending. I think that philosophy is at least as much about carefully attending to things as it is about the structure of arguments.” ThinkingLongPhilosophyUnderstandingInterestingChangedEthicsArgumentMost InterestingUnderestimated Author:Julian Baggini
“I guess I've always had such an identity crisis when it comes to other people's understanding of me. I don't feel it in myself but from an outsider's point of view, I can see they must be thinking, "Who the hell does this guy think he is?" But recently I've been thinking, okay, a white guy can't sing soul, but would a black person be made exempt from singing opera because it's not a tradition that belongs to them? It's the same kind of argument.” ThinkingKindSoulGuyUnderstandingBlackHellIdentitySingingArgumentTraditionOkayCrisisPoint Of View Author:Jamie Lidell
“I was very lucky. I was just finishing my PhD at Cambridge in 1981. This opportunity came up because whaling was drawing to an end. There was the prospect of a moratorium, and one of the arguments that was brought up, especially by Japanese whalers, was that, if we didn't have whaling, we would know nothing of whales. All the science depends on having dead animals, they argued, so that's one of the benefits of the whaling industry.” OpportunityAnimalLuckyArgument Author:Hal Whitehead
“Every argument that Margaret Thatcher ever made internationally didn't have a great deal to do with her contempt for Communism - she never really got into that. What she talked about was giving freedom to tens of millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe. She was an inspirational leader when it came to discussing her belief in freedom. More visceral and moral.” PeopleGivingBeliefLeaderMoralArgumentCommunismContemptEastern Author:Brian Mulroney
“In my own research, teaching and consulting experience I have to combine lessons from the field in a relatively inductive and open fashion with theoretical frameworks and conceptual arguments. The skills to deal with theory and conceptualization are a direct result of my formal education - reading, learning and conversations with other PhD students.” ReadingTeachingFashionStudentsArgumentDirectTheoretical Author:Yves Doz
“Generally speaking, I tend to think that whether a philosopher's views are true is a poor test of their quality. What matter are the arguments they give, and the insights those arguments inspire.” ThinkingGivingPoorQualityInspireArgumentInsight Author:Richard F. Heck
“To borrow from Mark Twain, I tend to think that reports of the death of supervaluationist approaches have been greatly exaggerated. The arguments that have been given against supervaluationism usually aim to show that it is just incoherent. But it's not. It may be false, as a general theory of vagueness, but it's a coherent and, I think, even correct way to think about some vagueness.” ThinkingArgumentAim Author:Richard F. Heck
“In the context of the kind of infrastructure space I'm looking at, I'm making a very unlikely argument by saying that all the stuff that's repeated, from spatial products to whole cities, which looks so daunting to architects, might be especially empowering. At this moment, it might be harder to make a meaningful object form alone, but easier to make an active form that can piggyback on those multipliers to recondition spaces in a politically significant way.” KindMomentsArgumentMeaningfulSignificantEmpoweringArchitect Author:Keller Easterling
“It's funny that Chairman Mao's great hero was Napoleon, because Napoleon started out as a revolutionary for the underdogs and then made himself an emperor. In fact, a lot of revolutionary leaders do that, and you think, "Well, that's spoiling your argument. What are you doing?" But on the other hand, the people themselves are enjoying trying out all these different ways to be. I hope that, like the Japanese, the Chinese hang on to their own traditions as well as try out Western ones. I hate it when people just lose so much confidence in who they are that they abandon their own culture.” PeopleThinkingTryingDifferentHateCultureEnjoyLeaderHeroArgumentTraditionI HateWesternChineseRevolutionaryAbandonEmperorUnderdog Author:Robert Wyatt
“What's a problem with India, in particular, is female feticide - aborting a female fetus. It is unacceptable and illegal, but it happens on a large scale. Then there's also the killing of baby girls. Female feticide is pretty much middle-class, Indian experts say. This is not happening among the poor; they just have to keep bearing children and hope they live. This casts into doubt the spurious argument that we just have to wait until everyone's middle class and then all of this will sort itself out. Better-off women will have fewer children - but at what cost?” ChildrenProblemGirlWaitingPoorDoubtBabyFemaleArgumentKillingMiddle ClassBaby Girl Author:Barbara Crossette
“Ronald Reagan, and before him, Richard Nixon, and before Nixon, a slew of conservative politicians going back through American history, have played to the idea that the great majority of poor people are somehow "undeserving," and being undeserving, merit at best very limited, oftentimes deeply coercive and humiliating, government interventions to better their finances. That narrative isn't about to disappear overnight; but it strikes me as being like a weak gruel - there's no sustenance in it, no heft behind the argument.” PeoplePoorPoliticianArgumentWeakConservativeDisappearFinanceAmerican HistoryPoor PeopleHumiliating Author:Sasha Abramsky
“One problem I have with talking about myself in the context of class divisiveness is that I can be - and indeed have been - used by others to demonstrate its absence and that it's only a matter of hard work to move upward socially. After all, how could I complain about anything, if the retort is: "But look where you got to? It can't be all that bad." But this is nonsense as an argument quite aside from its empirical absurdity because no single case can invalidate a statistical claim.” ProblemMovingHard WorkArgumentAbsenceComplainingNonsenseAbsurdity Author:Zia Haider Rahman
“There's a lot of disputes around the world, a lot of territorial conflicts around the world. But Israel is the only country in the world whose capital is not recognized. I don't think the United States recognizing Jerusalem as a capital will prevent any sort of peace agreement from happening in the future. It's not actually a sensible argument. What it will do is it will right a historic wrong. Something that should have happened 69 years ago will finally happen. And then we have to get about the process of trying to advance peace between the parties.” ThinkingWorldTryingCountryPartyConflictArgumentSensibleHistoric Author:Ron Dermer
“For me, even in the most subtle and introspective story, it's all about tension: this is the thread that ties a reader to story, something in the rhythm and in the argument that hypnotizes and pushes us to read with great attention. As a reader, I love the storytellers who play with this, and as a writer it is something I always look for.” AttentionArgumentRhythmTensionStorytellerIntrospective Author:Samanta Schweblin
“Nicholson Baker talks about the way in which the most successful nonfiction books are those that can be boiled down into an argument so that everybody can wade in with an opinion without having to undergo the inconvenience of having to read the book itself. The more you can condense it, the better.” BookOpinionSuccessfulArgumentInconvenienceNicholson Author:Geoff Dyer
“If I were doing somebody else's script or I adapted a book by Philip Roth, on set there could be a million different interpretations of the material and people could argue with me. Certainly on Synecdoche, New York we had discussions and arguments, but I felt like I had authority because I'm a writer.” PeopleBookDifferentAuthorityArgumentArguingDiscussionPhilip Author:Charlie Kaufman
“The early feminist argument that violence against women is not inherently a private matter, but has been privatized by the sexist structures of the state, the economy, and the family has had a powerful impact on public consciousness.” PowerfulConsciousnessEconomyViolenceArgumentFeministViolence Against WomenSexist Author:Angela Davis
“There's a young Danish guy who has done a lot of work from an evolutionary perspective, Mathias Clasen. Basically, his argument is we've evolved to fear the monstrous, to be very wary of large, unknown, life-threatening forces. In art, we can play with these things in ways that allow us to feel the intensity of the horror, but in "safe mode," if you like, detached from real consequences.” ArtRealDoneGuyPerspectiveHorrorConsequenceArgument Author:Brian Boyd
“Many Republicans who traditionally were for a positive role in the world, anti-Russian, now they want to defend their party and leader, and they don't care about real arguments. The paradox is the Democrats were so timid in criticising Vladimir Putin. Barack Obama appeased him and now they are criticising Putin's interference in American democracy. It is a strange reversal of the roles.” WorldRealCarePartyLeaderDemocracyStrangeRepublicanArgumentDemocratBarackParadoxInterference Author:Garry Kasparov
“The Democratic Party represents the American brain, and the Republicans represent not the American heart, or soul, but the American gut. The argument between brain and bowel, everywhere else in the Free World, has been decided long ago in favor of brain. But Americans still - it still divides the nation, this question, here in America.” WorldHeartLongSoulPartyBrainRepublicanArgumentDemocraticGutsDemocratic Party Author:Martin Amis
“I spent so much time at Escuela Caribe denying my true emotions and avoiding conflict that I became unsure of what my feelings really were. This is something that affects me to this day. I feel extremely uncomfortable during arguments, to the point of shutting down and not saying anything, like a turtle retracting into its shell. I can't stand conflict.” FeelingsEmotionConflictArgumentUncomfortableThis DayAvoidingUnsure Author:Julia Scheeres
“My book is going to be called Against Empathy, which may give you a feeling for where my argument is going to go. Whenever I talk about this, I have to begin in the most boring of all possible ways: by defining my terms. By "empathy," some people mean everything that is good - compassion, kindness, warmth, love, being a mensch, changing the world - and I'm for all of those things. I'm not a monster.” PeopleWorldGivingMeanBookFeelingsTermLove IsCompassionKindnessEmpathyArgumentBoringChanging The WorldWarmth Author:Paul Bloom
“We have the industrial agriculturalists who try and make an argument that big is beautiful. But if you do the math, and particularly if you factor in that the price of oil is going to go through the roof, and so the price of transportation is going to go through the roof - making it abundantly clear that it's out of whack. The efficiency arguments are already crumbling, particularly if you actually include the cost of food pollution that these industries cause. They are tremendously unsustainable and tremendously inefficient.” TryingBeautifulArgumentMathPollutionRoofEfficiencyTransportation Author:Raj Patel
“If you come from a working-class background, you can't afford to write full time, because you're just not being paid. Basically, all my arguments come down to Marxist doctrine: The world is shaped by money, so the only voices you'll hear are the ones with money behind them. But thankfully, culture and cool are some things that circumvent money, because if you're cool, people will want to give you money - suddenly you shape the market and people start coming to you. Which is why culture has always been a traditional way out for working-class people.” PeopleWorldGivingWritingCultureArgumentMarxistCool People Author:Caitlin Moran
“I think what hinders the argument is when people are afraid of hurting the feelings of racists and people who are genuinely - some of them - out of their minds. They demand to see Obama's birth certificate. They claim that he wants to kill our grandparents with his health care. They want to be able to carry their guns into every public place. Why do we need to coddle these people?” PeopleThinkingMindFeelingsCareHurtBirthGunArgumentHealth CareRacistGrandparentHinder Author:Janeane Garofalo
“The fact that I am constantly immersed in the act of legal writing and editing has made me a better and more efficient creative writer and editor. In the end, lawyers need to tell compelling stories when they write a brief or other legal argument. A successful lawyer understands that the judge is merely a person who is going to read that brief, which should articulate a compelling reason for the judge to rule in that lawyer's favor. In other words, a legal advocate needs to get the judge to care. That's not dissimilar to what a creative writer does.” WritingReasonCareCreativeSuccessfulJudgingArgumentLawyer Author:Daniel Olivas
“I love to just listen and watch. I could happily watch a security camera at a store. Often during a day I'll see a guy selling pretzels or an argument that somebody's having on a stoop and I'll think, "Oh I wish I had my camera, I wish I could capture this moment." There's something about people being people and interacting that can be so beautiful when it's framed by a camera. That desire to capture people as they are, and the stubbornness to keep going when they don't necessarily want you to capture them being who they are, are key.” PeopleThinkingMomentsBeautifulDesireGuyWishSecurityArgumentSellingKeep GoingJust ListenStubbornnessFramed Author:Marshall Curry
“Most of this film, however, is about interpretation - are these people terrorists or freedom fighters? Are they good or bad? Is cutting timber good or bad? And I don't feel like the answers to those questions are simple, so we don't try to answer them for the audience. I wanted to elicit the strongest - and most heartfelt - arguments from the characters in the film and let those arguments bang up against the strongest arguments of their opponents.” PeopleTryingCharacterFilmSimpleAudienceCuttingArgumentTerroristFighterHeartfeltFreedom Fighter Author:Marshall Curry
“You punch me, I punch back. I do not believe it's good for one's self-respect to be a punching bag.” BelieveSelfRespectArgumentSelf RespectBagsMayorsPunchingPunching Bag Author:Ed Koch