argument analysis Quotes

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I've reached that state am I qualified to speak. This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life

Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. The implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides ad hominem responses reach far.

You explain right well, and you shew that you understand argument and are not a mere sophist since you accept that which cannot be denied.

We have to see conflict as thinking and then get really good at it.

In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country.

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

Obviously something is wrong with the entire argument of "obviousness".

In most quarrels there is a fault on both sides. A quarrel may be compared to a spark, which cannot be produced without a flint, as well as steel. Either of them may hammer on wood forever; no fire will follow.

Above all, the ability to feel the force of an argument apart from the substance it deals with is the strongest weapon against prejudice.

A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue - which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.

I decided to get to know my opponents and their arguments.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.

Argumentation is a human enterprise that is embedded in a larger social and psychological context. This context includes (1) the total psyches of the two persons engaged in dialogue, (2) the relationship between the two persons, (3) the immediate situation in which they find themselves and (4) the larger social, cultural and historical situation surrounding them.

Sometimes, if you really don't know how you feel about a topic, reading how both sides argue it can help.

It's arguing, in a very good and positive way. It's sort of sitting down and pulling an argument apart. I think that's a very oddly Jewish thing. And it's the chaos of family and a slight sort of cosy messiness of it all.

I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.

I have learned that if I only see and deeply appreciate one side of an argument, it means I am probably missing something important.

Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form.

Lincoln had no such person that he could talk with. Often, as a result, he debated with himself, and he would draw up a kind of list of the pros and cons of an argument, and carefully figure them out, and he might test them in public.

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.