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Arguments Quotes

Browse 143 quotes about Arguments.

Arguments Quotes

“Saying “I’d like you to pay more attention to me” is more likely to produce a conversation (and a satisfying outcome) than “Is it impossible for you to focus on me just once?” Because instead of hearing the underlying feeling or request, the other person focuses on the sarcasm and the attack. Instead of hearing that you feel lonely, they hear that you think they are thoughtless. The real message doesn’t get through, because they are distracted by the need to defend themselves.”

ArgumentsExpressing YourselfDifficult Conversations
Book:Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
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“Having us lose ourselves in asinine arguments, activities, careers, etc., designed to disconnect us from our deeper spiritual nature and purpose promotes the creation of powerful emotions connected to our thoughts and beliefs. In turn, our own externally elicited emotions help shape and direct the controlled chaos of the world.”

SpiritualityMind ControlArgumentsSocial EngineeringDivide And ConquerBehavior ModificationMimetic DesireImagination PowerChaos Of Life
Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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“Our community deserves leaders who should know what debates and arguments are better conducted out of the public eye, instead of dumping their baskets of dirty laundry all over the internet. Our community deserves leaders who do not put political expedience or convenience before their commitments to those they supposedly represent. Our community deserves leaders who do not make about-turns on issues such as freedom of speech and accountability to the community they serve when it becomes too embarrassing for them, or too uncomfortable. Our community deserves leaders who can and want to work together, not fling their handbags at each other, hissing like drama queens.”

CommunityIssuesInternetUncomfortableAccountabilityLeadersFreedom Of SpeechEmbarrassingConvenienceBasketsFlingPublic EyeArgumentsHandbagsHissingDebatesDirty LaundryRepresentCommitmentsWork TogetherDeservesDumpingDrama QueensAbout TurnsConductedPolitical ExpedienceSupposedly
Author:Christina Engela
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“...Plato conceived of philosophy as necessarily gregarious rather than solitary. The exposure of presumptions is best done in company, the more argumentative the better. This is why discussion around the table is so essential. This is why philosophy must be argumentative. It proceeds by way of arguments, and the arguments are argued over. Everything is aired in the bracing dialectic wind stirred by many clashing viewpoints. Only in this way can intuitions that have their source in societal or personal idiosyncrasies be exposed and questioned. ... There can be nothing like "Well, that's what I was brought up to believe," or "I just feel that it's right," or "I am privy to an authoritative voice whispering in my ear," or "I'm demonstrably smarter than all of you, so just accept that I know better here." The discussion around the seminar table countenances only the sorts of arguments and considerations that can, in principle, make a claim on everyone who signs on to the project of reason: appealing to, evaluating, and being persuaded by reasons. (pp. 38-39)”

DiscussionArgumentsReasonsArgumentative
Book:Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
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“A few more Rules may fitly be given here, for correspondence that has unfortunately become controversial. One is, don’t repeat yourself. When once you have said your say, fully and clearly, on a certain point, and have failed to convince your friend, drop that subject: to repeat your arguments, all over again, will simply lead to his doing the same; and so you will go on, like a Circulating Decimal. Did you ever know a Circulating Decimal come to an end?”

ControversyArgumentsRepeating
Book:Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing
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“Clara shrugged and immediately knew her betrayal of Peter. In one easy movement she'd distanced herself from his bad behavior, even thought she herself was responsible for it. Just before everyone had arrived, she'd told Peter about her adventure with Gamache. Animated and excited she'd gabbled on about her box and the woods and the exhilarating climb up the ladder to the blind. But her wall of words hid from her a growing quietude. She failed to notice his silence, his distance, until it was too late and he'd retreated all the way to his icy island. She hated that place. From it he stood and stared, judged, and lobbed shards of sarcasm. 'You and your hero solve Jane's death?' 'I thought you'd be pleased,' she half lied. She actually hadn't thought at all, and if she had, she probably could have predicted his reaction. But since he was comfortably on his Inuk island, she'd retreat to hers, equipped with righteous indignation and warmed by moral certitude. She threw great logs of 'I'm right, you're an unfeeling bastard' onto the fire and felt secure and comforted.”

RelationshipsSelf RighteousnessArguments
Book:Still Life
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“I hope you won't take this the wrong way . . ." is another bell ringer for me. I sense the mealymouthed attacker approaching so if I cannot flee, I explain in no uncertain voice if there is even the slightest chance that I might take a statement the wrong way, be assured that I will do so. I advise the speaker that it would be better to remain silent than to try to collect the speaker's bruised feelings, which I intend to leave in pieces scattered on the floor. I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves to be ready and able to come to our own self-defense.”

FeelingsSelf DefenseAdvocacyArgumentsDiscussionsSelf Advocacy
Book:Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
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“It is enough to write a few lines about tanks in the streets in some sad country, about a clear injustice, which requires no description; it is enough to move from one side to another, to satisfy someone’s taste, the need of the moment, the need for “big” games to take a peek into everything and to prove everything with cheap opinions formed almost on command, almost as a recipe of measured pain to resolve the crisis, to extinguish the pain based on a few words that don’t change anything except that they flatter vanity and a misguided interest in all dimensions of life and creation, in the air that is being poisoned by smoke from cars, smoke from the television screens, the smoke curtains of politicians, left and right, the smoke of films and pop culture, smokescreens of intelligence that finds an explanation for all this, makes up theories, finds justification for the schizophrenic decisions of the new rulers, for wars, agreements, contracts; finds justification for obedience, for the sale of beliefs under the disguise of conviction, for several awards, for a few moments of illusion in the hocus-pocus world where the truth does not interest anyone anymore, except for ways for lies to be packaged and sold as the greatest truth with the help of big intellectuals that will find a good argument, a good defense and justification for everything, since everything becomes much easier, if a hoax is supported by “scientific” evidence.”

TruthInjusticeDejan StojanovicArgumentsDissidentsBig Games
Book:Serbian Satire and Aphorisms
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“Today, at different times, I ran into two friends who'd had a fight. Each one told me his version of why they'd fought. Each one told me the truth. Each one gave me his reasons. They were both right. They were both absolutely right. It's not that one of them saw it one way and the other another way, or that one saw one side of what happened and the other a different side. No: each one saw things exactly as they'd happened, each one saw them according to the same criterion, but each one saw something different, and so each one was right. I was baffled by this dual existence of truth.”

LifeTruthVersionsArgumentsFightsDisagreements
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“The border remains a fluid, mutating, stubbornly troubling, enthusiastically lethal region. Perhaps it's not a region at all. Maybe it's just an idea nobody can agree on. A conversation that never ends, even when it becomes an argument and all participants kick over the table and spill their drinks and stomp out of the room.”

IdeasUnited StatesUsaMexicoUnited States Of AmericaUsArgumentsBorderUs Mexico Border
Book:The Devil's Highway: A True Story
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“When you’re talking birth control, what blocks it and freezes it out is that it’s not a matter of more or fewer babies being argued. That’s just on the surface. What’s underneath is a conflict of faith, of faith in empirical social planning versus faith in the authority of God as revealed by the teachings of the Catholic Church. You can prove the practicality of planned parenthood till you get tired of listening to yourself and it’s going to go nowhere because your antagonist isn’t buying the assumption that anything socially practical is good per se. Goodness for him has other sources which he values as much as or more than social practicality.”

PerspectiveArgumentsConflictsBeliefs And Values
Book:Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance and Siddhartha 2 Books Collection Set
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“--and yet, in my heart, I always knew we loved each other, a part of me understanding that the passion with which we hurt each other came from something strong enough to withstand the blows we inflicted. Looking back, I guess I always felt that we would have time to work things out eventually, not imagining what was to come; that we would one day have to cut all ties and never speak again.”

LoveRelationshipsHurtLossFamilyBlameMothersDaughtersArguments
Book:Watching Edie
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“As much as I cared about him, I wasn’t a slave to fate. I could choose to ignore my feelings, strong as they were. It would be painful, but no more so than letting myself pine for my friend.”

PainLife QuotesHurtFateFriendsLongingBitternessFriendship QuotesQuotes About LifeFriendReal FriendsBest FriendsAnnaFriends To LoversFriendship And LoveArgumentsFriend QuotesFriendship True And LoyalReal FriendshipAwesome QuotesFrienshipTall Dark Streak Of LightningSo TrueTdsolJ M RichardsIgnoring IssuesBest Friend QuotesFirst AidIn Love With Best FriendBest Friend LoveBandaidsIn Love With My FriendMazing Quotes
Book:Tall, Dark Streak of Lightning
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“I suppose that means you don’t want any band-aids, either,” I said, a touch more bitterly than I’d meant to.”

Life QuotesHurtFriendsBitternessFriendship QuotesQuotes About LifeFriendReal FriendsBest FriendsAnnaArgumentsFriend QuotesFriendship True And LoyalReal FriendshipAwesome QuotesFrienshipAmazing QuotesTall Dark Streak Of LightningSo TrueTdsolJ M RichardsFirst AidBandaidsSilly FightsStupid Arguments
Book:Tall, Dark Streak of Lightning
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“Hate. The word is thrown around as uselessly and as often as love is, and is used as a means in which to accuse and inflict damage; the weak-in-argument (weak in general) use it to discredit those with whom they disagree rather than dissect the issues for what they really are. I liken it to the predictable ad hominem attack, which is about as transparent as those who so ridiculously claim to know what’s in the heart of another.”

HatePoliticsDebateArgumentsHating
Author:Donna Lynn Hope
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“Ove could not in all honesty remember how it all started. It wasn't the sort of dispute where you did remember. It was more an argument where the little disagreements had ended up so entangled that every new word was treacherously booby-trapped, and in the end it wasn't possible to open one's mouth at all without setting off at least four unexploded mines from earlier conflicts. It was the sort of argument that had just run, and run, and run. Until one day it just ran out.”

FriendshipAngerArguments
Book:A Man Called Ove
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“The actual rewards that come from arguing with other people have nothing to do with winning and losing. A good argument helps us refine our own ideas and discover where our reasoning is the weakest. Other people's opposition can help us turn our own half-formed ideas into clear assertions backed by solid reasoning. And setting our ideas and opinions against someone else's helps us know each other better, which makes us better friends. We get these benefits from arguments when we collaborate with a partner. We do not get them when we try to destroy an enemy. That is how non-zero-sum games work.”

FriendshipConversationDialogueArgumentsZero Sum GameGame Theory
Book:We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America's Civic Tradition
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“She meant that they'd never used words like "separation" and "divorce" even in their worst screaming matches. They yelled things like, "You're infuriating!" "You don't think!" "You are the most annoying woman in the history of annoying women!" "I hate you!" "I hate you more!" and they always, always used the word "always," even though Clementine's mother had said you should never use that word in an argument with your spouse, as in, for example, "You always forget to refill the water jug!" (But Sam did always forget. It was accurate.)”

MarriageArguments
Book:Truly Madly Guilty
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