Leo Szilard Quotes

If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn’t trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.

I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide.

I don’t expect anyone to just sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

I embark upon discussion and argument with great ease and liberty

People should debate. They shouldn't be afraid to talk. You should listen to what other people think and how they make decisions. There should be an exchange of ideas and opinions because that's how we learn.

My own thinking is often clarified and extended by talking with students.

Debate is so much better than denial.

Contention is inseparable from creating knowledge. It is not contention we should try to avoid, but discourses that attempt to suppress contention.

I adore people who ask questions and who cause others to share in their search.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.

And I've always said, 'If two people think the same thing about everything, one of them isn't necessary.' We need to be able to understand that if we're going to make real progress.

Only science and the spirit of seeking truth from facts can save China. I firmly believe in this.

I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job.

There's always merit to having a debate.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.

The word 'tolerance' once meant we all have the right to argue rationally for our deepest convictions in the public arena. Now it means those convictions are not even subject to rational debate.

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

Disagreements are one of the fundamental positive aspects of science.

Reasonable, sensible men can always make a reasonable scheme appear such to other reasonable men.

Neither table pounding nor dreamy euphoria can be permitted to substitute for plausible argument. If impatience is not to be allowed to short-circuit argument with unsupported assertions, reason must be honored above the crude and noisy enthusiasms and antipathies.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

It does not good to shout anyone down….There will be no shouting.