Hilary Mantel Quotes

I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these, I chose the conflicts of disputation rather than the trophies of war.

My dream job would be a lawyer. I can talk my way out of anything, and I love cross-examining people. I think I'd be a really good lawyer.

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy.

A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick.

I am a trial lawyer. Matilda says that at dinner on a good day I sound like an affidavit.

Dick Durbin's a worthy opponent on any debate. He's very intelligent, quick. Knows his facts and puts them forward well.

I was a lawyer for about ten years. The law teaches one to see things from all different angles.

I'm going to be a guy who can defend a bunch of different positions.

I'm a lawyer; I win arguments for a living.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you're advancing. If you don't you're as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn't there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

Until now, until I actually got into law class, I just never thought of it as being an interest for me, but it's really funny because now that I'm in law, I'm like 'Wow, I could be a lawyer.

I never worked a job that required research. I'm not really good at it, to be honest.

The power of real debate is in the language and intellectual honesty of the debaters, alongside the engagement of spectators.

Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate, it's not simply, 'Do you know what DNA is? Or what the Big Bang is?' That's an aspect of science literacy. The biggest part of it is do you know how to think about information that's presented in front of you.

I'm a better polemicist in prose.

The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.

I've been told by the prosecutors and by my own attorneys I should go to law school. I guess I have a knack for it.

Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.

I'm a mathematician by education, but I have this other thing. A gut instinct.

I spent most of high school working on the debate team, probably at some expense to my grades. Being a member of the team was great training in critical analysis, organization, and logic.

And I used to assemble the family to hear because I thought that they were so good that even from the point of view of enjoyment people shouldn't miss them, and I got every word of his that I could, and I could see by hard argument there was only the one way for it.

Every problem can be solved as long as they use common sense and apply the right research and techniques.

A philosopher once said, 'Half of good philosophy is good grammar.'

The good lawyer is the great salesman.

Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.