One of the appeals of markets, as a public philosophy, is they seem to spare us the need to engage in public arguments about the meaning of goods. So markets seem to enable us to be non-judgmental about values. But I think that’s a mistake.
Keep cool; anger is not an argument.
I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn’t changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.
Traditional arguments for the existence of God and contemporary attempts to use fine-tuning and cosmology to back up the case for his existence always strike me as kinds of games, since hardly anyone believes on the basis of these arguments at all.
If a person can be said to have the wrong attitude, there is no need to pay attention to his arguments.
On the stage, the characters express themselves more through words than images. So the arguments of the characters and the tension between characters – words have to be used to express that, and I love that about theater.
There’s tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time.
There is not a single extant study that supports all the arguments against men being with their children. It’s absolute bollocks.
‘Treme’ begins after Hurricane Katrina, and it’s a year-by-year account of how everyday people there put their lives back together. It’s sort of a testament to, or an argument for why, a great American city like New Orleans needs to be saved and preserved.
We are in the year 2013, and racism is still amongst us and is still a problem. It’s not simply an argument for the History Channel or something that belongs to the past or something that only happens in other countries.
But black people fall for that same argument, and they go around talking about law breakers. We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws. Those laws that keep them up, keep us down.
I decided to get to know my opponents and their arguments.
I rush to add that I find the Web infinitely useful for rustling up information, settling arguments or locating the legends of rock stars.
Living with the liberals, you get to hear their arguments, fight with them all the time. Keeps me alert.
Denialist arguments are often bolstered by accurate information taken wildly out of context, wielded selectively, and supported by fake experts who often don’t seem fake at all.
The argument that all Jews have a heartfelt investment in the state of Israel is untrue. Some have a heartfelt investment in corned beef sandwiches.
I was a human rights lawyer for 20 years, I believed those values of dignity, equality and non-discrimination were a given. believed the only question in my lifetime would be – how much further do we extend those values? I did not think in my lifetime we’d actually be having an argument about those values.
My father was a professor of folklore, and my mother was a teacher until she was married. I had a good relationship with them, and the only argument we had was when I went to university and wanted to go into the theater instead of studying to be a lawyer.
I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change – which lasted a couple of weeks – was based on the very simple instinct that it’s wrong to kill animals for food.
Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.
I believe in what I believe, and I think after all these years I’ve heard a lot of arguments, and I’m convinced by the superiority of the arguments that are made on the conservative side. I think that’s a better way to run a society.
The argument of the strongest is always the best.
Always remember that your calmness under fire is your best defense in any argument or discussion.
During Seattle’s successful campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage, our opponents would sometimes roll their eyes and snort, ‘If $15 is so good, why not $50?’ It was a straw man argument: Nobody was proposing a $50 minimum wage; it would have been too high, and we said so.
I’ve learned to be true to yourself, stick to the big arguments, don’t get distracted by the everyday kerfuffle that is in the nature of any democratic system.
What I look for in any book is an argument, based on evidence, that changes the way I think about something important.
Argument is conclusive, but it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.
History is full of really good stories. That’s the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.
To assume that someone’s views are invariably influenced or shaped by his or her partner is lazy. It is an intellectual crutch we grope for when we do not have an effective counter to someone’s argument.
I cannot think of a tactical alliance with the Left because I represent the idea that there is a peaceful, nonviolent way to dislodge a dictatorship… A tactical Left alliance damages my argument. If I succeed with them, we will never know if peace can really produce freedom.
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
Every work of history is a combination of argument and narrative. The longer I write, the more I emphasize the narrative, the story, and the less attention I give to the argument. Arguments come and go.
Don’t drag the Mossad into political arguments. These are people who can’t defend themselves.
The vast majority of people in academia, especially at the administrative level, have so little confidence in their ability to make an argument for their liberal cause, they choose to keep conservatives from making their own case at all. It’s pathetic, cowardly, unconstitutional and completely predictable.
Whenever I run into prejudice. I smile and feel sorry for them, and I say to myself, There’s one more argument for birth control.
Whenever you’re going into oral argument, it’s preferable to be able to weave the arguments together. That gets harder when you split the argument into pieces.
Big Water makes an argument straight out of Economics 101. The best way to deliver water to people’s homes efficiently, the water barons argue, is to put the process in the hands of the market. If water is scarce, then raise the price – let the law of supply and demand take over!
The moral argument is that we give big business a huge tax break, and why do we do it? To get their jobs.
The religion that has to be supported by law is without value, not only, but a fraud and a curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket is hardly worth making.
Political linguists have argued that the right often uses stories to make an argument, while the left falls back on facts and statistics.
Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions.
In the past, secularists sought to challenge dogma by the use of rational argument, claiming, for example, that miracles described in the Bible are scientifically impossible.
The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.
A real pleasure is a pleasure that one enjoys by one’s self, without a companion, and without a single argument.
Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can’t understand.
Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don’t like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.
I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of ‘student-athletes.’ I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don’t believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that’s another story.
Frankly, the idea that exposed legs are some sort of sexual provocation is an argument one would expect to hear from a religious fundamentalist, not a feminist.
It’s seldom that you find great moments in television. Usually you remember – in ‘Breaking Bad’ or any of these other great shows – you remember situations or characters. Not moments. But I have to say, I can make the same argument for mainstream movies, which have bad narratives and also no memorable moments.
But, you know, there’s still an argument, there’s still ten states that outlaw premarital sex, and many more states where adultery is still outlawed and a crime.
If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‘You don’t know how to use the English language,’ or ‘How could you make that argument?’ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.
My main argument against staying in the E.U. has been the poor economic record of the E.U. as a whole and the eurozone in particular. The performance has got worse the more the E.U. has developed joint policies and central controls.
