Debate is a discussion between two or more people who disagree. One person presents their side and then the other person responds to them. Usually someone will be in favor of a topic, but someone else may oppose the idea.
Quotes on Debate
- “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” -Reinhold Niebuhr
- “Debate is an intellectual process. It is not a physical contact sport.”-Don Marquis
- “Debate is the worst form of conversation because in order to win, one must have a good memory and an even worse opinion.”
-Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -Perigord - “Debate is a game of checkers played by diplomats, while war is a game of chess played by generals.”-Thomas Jefferson
- “Debate is an art. It needs to be practiced regularly and thoughtfully, not occasionally and emotionally.”-Ralph Nader
- “Debate should be a process of free exchange of ideas with no holds barred. The best ideas emerge from being tested in that environment.”-William Weld
- “DeBeers is a diamond-mining, treasure hunting company. If you can’t find any diamonds, blame the girl. You know, she just wasn’t trying hard enough.”-Johnny Carson
- “Debates are won by men who keep their cool and lose by those who get emotionally involved.”-Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “Debate is an opinionated conversation between two people of opposing viewpoints.”-Linda Schubert
- “A debate is certainly an intellectual contest; but it is a contest in which the antagonists have very different ideas about the rules.”-Joseph Wood Krutch
- “Debates are won by men who keep their cool and lose by those who get emotionally involved.”-Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “It has become harder to defend oneself to one’s enemies than to one’s friends.”-Anatole France
- “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”-Thomas Paine
- “The Emancipation Proclamation was a mistake administered by a man of great moral courage and vision, who had no idea of the result.”-Henry Louis Mencken
- “And now the naked truth that I have been afraid to tell…I am not really right-wing. I am not really left-wing. I believe that one’s political philosophy must be based on one’s economic philosophy, and since my economic philosophy is as different from Karl Marx as it could possibly be, my political philosophy must differ from his. I am an economic royalist. Surely you have known all along that I am.”-H.L. Mencken to Albert Jay Nock, 1942
- “The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.”-Will Rogers
- “I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. It is so valuable that it is not permissible to risk it casually.”-Henry Hazlitt
- “Look to the finger, not to the moon. Do not lose sight of the immediate object. The man who lets himself be led astray from the present by concentrating on the future will quickly suffer a relapse.”-From The Art of Thinking Clearly
“The pleasure of seeing how wrong your friends were is one of life’s greatest pleasures.” - “No people are more frequently wrong, upon principle, than those who will not admit they’re wrong.”-Samuel Johnson
- “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”-F. Scott Fitzgerald,
- “The Crack Up” “The trouble with the liberal media is not that it’s unfair; it’s that it’s too accurate. It gives us far more information about Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. It doesn’t leave out stories about Republicans or make up phony ones, but you can’t imagine how many hours of prime time it devotes to bona fide Democratic candidates v. the number it devotes to Republicans. The media has always been biased, but now it’s in our face.”-Ann Coulter
- “The trouble with this country isn’t that the people are taxed too little, it’s that the government spends too much.”-Ronald Reagan
- “There are, as we know, two kinds of truths: lies and damn lies.” -Mark Twain
- “If all of us are going to get along, we’ve got to begin by being honest and truthful and respecting each other’s differences.”-Gerald Ford
- “The replacement of sound science in thoughtful debate by orchestrated work of propaganda is not new. It was used in the 1930s to perfect a deadly weapon of war, the atomic bomb.”-U.S. Senator Bill Frist
- “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”-Benjamin Franklin
- “We must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil, more dangerous than these men of violence: It is our failure to recognize that government does not have the answer; it is our failure to recognize that government is the problem.”-Ronald Reagan
- “It could be that the purpose of my life is simply to serve as a warning to others.”-Elie Wiesel
- “When you want to help people, you tell the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell people what they want to hear.”-Bob Dole
- “We are fast approaching the stage of ultimate inversion: When government hides behind the Constitution.”-Ayn Rand
How to Avoid the Mistakes of an Argumentative Person
It’s easy to get into an argument with someone, but the best thing to do is avoid these mistakes altogether. It’s important to stay calm and show empathy for the other person. Listening and asking questions can help to find a way around the problem.
