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Argument Quotes

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Argument Quotes

“She [my mother] was the force around which our world turned. My mother was propelled through the universe by the brute force of reason. She was the judge in all our arguments. One disapproving word from her was enough to send us off to hide in a corner, where we would cry and fantasize our own martyrdom. And yet. One kiss could restore us to princedom. Without her, our lives would dissolve into chaos.”

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Author:Nicole Krauss
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“She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as a woman judge men, not on the strength of their arguments, and not in their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, their strength of soul, their compassion, and... ah, this above all... their conversation.”

MenLooksSoulCharacterPassionForceCompassionJudgingBattleConversationArgumentIntensityClevernessProwess
Author:Orson Scott Card
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“People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.”

PeopleHeartMatterFactsFeelingsLyingDesireResultsBehindsTalkingToo MuchEffectsIllusionArgumentImportanceTongueDistractionPortionsMatter Of FactGreat Results
Book:Sister Carrie
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“The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world.”

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Author:Robert Hughes
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“One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held for him more then just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of Creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift, but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument that life did not just happen.”

WaySaidMightHappensFormSoundPleasureDealsPowerfulOne ThingAirCreationShapesArgumentAimMeatRight WayComfortingFadedAstonishmentCold Mountain
Author:Charles Frazier
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“not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.”

TermCommonPrinciplesSubjectsMankindArgumentIndependentCommon SenseCommandFirmJustifyCompelled
Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretary of state
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“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”

IfsScienceSilenceCompassionCourageArgumentDignitySakeExcuseStupiditySelfishGravesPlentyExpertsMotiveSuspectsInvitesArrogantIrrationalDistrustSpectatorsTranscendentSeductiveSubordinatesMammalsUnfairnessGod Is Not GreatLive For Others
Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian
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“[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.”

ThinkingTryingHas BeensPhilosophyCareTogetherStrongChurchBoysWasteArgumentDancingPracticalsDoctrineContemporaryMaterialismCourageousAlliesWasting TimeDozenAcademicConventionalAccustomedRuthlessStarksJargonScrewtape LettersDon't Waste TimeTrue Or False
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth. It's good for us when, in spite of all of the sober, pragmatic, and even correct arguments that war is sometimes necessary someone says: war is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being.”

MayWarSometimesGuySpeakWorstArgumentMurderScalesProphetSpiteWildernessIrrationalSoberPragmaticLarge ScaleStupidestSlaughterhouse Five
Book:The Brain-Dead Megaphone
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“The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.”

IfsMindHumansKindChildrenUseAsksAnswersFeetFineBehaviorArgumentAskingDefeatCleverYieldHuman BehaviorSageApes
Author:Mary Doria Russell
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“She tried to be calm, and leave things to take their course; and tried to dwell much on this argument of rational dependence – “Surely, if there be constant attachment on each side, our hearts must understand each other ere long. We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment’s inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.” And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt as if their being in company with each other, under their present circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.”

IfsHeartKindLongMomentsGirlCoursesFeltSidesCompanyBoysMinutesCircumstancesArgumentConstantCalmRationalAttachmentDependenceExposingBoy And GirlMisledMischievous
Book:The Jane Austen Library: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, Watsons, Sanditon
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“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

IfsKnowsMenProblemTruthScienceLyingAcceptingTaughtTruth IsArgumentIncludingSimplicityObviousResistanceConclusionEaseComplexityThreadSkepticismFabricColleaguesSimplestExplainingDelightedWovenPhilosophy Of ScienceScientific TruthFalsityQuestioning BeliefsAccepting The TruthI Know The Truth
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

MenDoeIdeasGodSeemsChristianReligionUniverseLinesJusticeLordAtheismArgumentMereAtheistCrueltyCompareNovelistsAgnosticUnjustCrookedStraight LinesGod ExistsEssayistsApologeticCruel WorldProof Of GodProof That God ExistsProof God ExistsProblem Of EvilCrooked Lines
Book:Joyful Christian
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“In the plenitude of their relationship, Florentina Ariza asked himself which of the two was love: the turbulent bed or the peaceful Sunday afternoons, and Sara Noriega calmed him with the simple argument that love was everything they did naked. She said, 'Spiritual love from the waist up and physical love from the waist down.”

SaidTwoSpiritualSimpleBedArgumentNakedPeacefulSundayAfternoonSpiritual LovePlenitudeSunday Afternoons
Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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“My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.”

HumansDiesHuman BeingsPlansMastersFitMassArgumentSpeciesExperimentsObligationRationalThrivePushingFascismMurdererCasualCondemningProcreationPro AbortionPro Choice Abortion
Author:Camille Paglia
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“Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself - a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.”

SelfPastFormArmsBalanceArgumentVictimExcuseCommitRemoveAtrocitiesPredatorNo ExcusesPerpetuatingRectifyAtrocities Committed
Author:Frank Herbert
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“Katy was neither a Methodist nor a Masochist. She was a goddess and the silence of goddesses is genuinely golden. None of your superficial plating. A solid, twenty-two-carat silence all the way through. The Olympian's trap is kept shut, not by an act of willed discretion, but because there's really nothing to say. Goddesses are all of one piece. There's no internal conflict in them. Whereas the lives of people like you and me are one long argument. Desires on one side, woodpeckers on the other. Never a moment of real silence.”

PeopleWayLongTwoRealMomentsDesireSidesSilencePiecesLike YouConflictArgumentTwentiesGoldenInternalsGoddessTrapsSuperficialDiscretionOne PieceOlympianMethodistsTwenty TwoInternal ConflictWoodpeckers
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.”

IfsThinkingMenShouldHandsAudienceAtheismStreetsOughtProveOrdinaryArgumentAddAtheistPhilosopherImpressionAgnosticAgnosticismOrdinary ManPhilosophicDescribe Myself
Book:Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68
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“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.”

KindPhilosophyPoliticalLiteratureCan DoNumbersWiseConflictJokesArgumentDullEnlightening
Book:Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor: A Lifetime Collection of Favorite Jokes, Anecdotes, and Limericks with Copious Notes on how to Tell Them and why
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“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”

IfsWorldWantLifeInspirationalMadeRealEndsWonderThis WorldParticularArmsMarriedArgumentFrightenedBridesAmazementBridegroom
Author:Mary Oliver
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“[The Head of Radio Three] had been ensnared by the Music Director of the college and a Professor of Philosophy. These two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase "too much Mozart" was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favour of any given programme-scheduling strategy.”

MenTwoSelfPhilosophyWould BeThreeGivenToo MuchCollegeExpressionDirectorsArgumentStrategyBusyDefinitionsRadioSentencesPhrasesReasonableProfessorsMeaninglessFavourExplainingContradictoryProgrammesThree WordsScheduling
Author:Douglas Adams
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“We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse - or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.”

YearsFirstsHumansWellsTwoLastsCenturyMoralityThousandConversationArgumentTwentiesPhilosophicalInsightWell BeingThousand YearsDiscourse
Author:Sam Harris
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“According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking.”

LittlesEndsMatterArgumentConvincedPermanentThe End Of The DayHeroicAdmirableManlyStylishBartimaeus TrilogyHeroic Death
Book:Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Three: Ptolemy's Gate
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“I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it.”

WantFeelsBelieveHumansArtMadeHuman BeingsPleasureOughtGeniusArt IsArgumentPassionateUtteranceGood Faith
Book:The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought
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“Virginia Woolf wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword." On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where all is correct. But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion." Nothing follows a regular course. Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will be more perilous.”

IfsMayDoeSaidEnoughLyingOrderFallCoursesSidesInterestingExistenceCrazyShadowArgumentTraditionCrossesConfusionBroadsConventionsContinentsCrossingsVirginiaPray LoveEat Pray Love BookEat Pray And LoveBest Eat Pray LoveEat Love PrayWoolf
Book:The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims
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“One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.”

IfsThinkingSelfFactsActionUsedAsksUnitedConsciousnessImagineAwarenessPureArgumentSpontaneity
Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
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