Quotes about Argument

There is great danger that modern culture, progressing in its anti-supernaturalistic course, will be stirred against the steadfastness of believers and attempt to accomplish by oppression what it cannot obtain by reasoning and argument.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.

Reason is flawless, de jure, but reasoners are not, de facto.

Chesterton said once that there is only one unanswerable argument against Christianity: Christians. And

Not all who listen, believe. If you call the Gospel a crazy fairy tale, a far-too-good-to-be-true myth, an insane extension of wishful thinking, or even a blasphemous lie, I will respect you and argue with you. But if you call it a platitude, I can only pity you, for that means you have never listened to it.

It is an a fortiori argument: if even the veneration of a beloved father's relics after he dies is a good thing, how much more the veneration of a saint's?

We hold it to be true that circular reasoning is the only reasoning that is possible to finite man...We must go round and round a thing to see more of its dimensions and to know more about it, in general, unless we are larger than that which we are investigating. Unless we are larger than God we cannot reason about Him by any other way, than by a transcendental or circular argument.

Civil debate is a healthy and democratic process. If one cannot make one's point without yelling, name-calling, or insulting others, one should develop a stronger argument before speaking further.

Healthy and democratic process. If one cannot make one's point without yelling, name-calling, or insulting others, one should develop a stronger argument before speaking further.

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

The number-one reason most people lose arguments is not because they're wrong; it's because they don't know when to quit.

In 1797 a member of Congress argued that, while a liberal immigration policy was fine when the country was new and unsettled, now that America had reached its maturity and was fully populated, immigration should stop—an argument which has been repeated at regular intervals throughout American history.