Debate Skills Quotes

Debates measure abilities you don't need to govern, like glibness. To govern you should be thoughtful, not glib. A debater has a sense of humor, but what's it got to do with governing? The ability to think on your feet. You make a budget sitting on your tush.

Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic; since both are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to impeach.

Newt Gingrich would cream Barack Obama in a debate.

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.

Anyone who knows me knows how sharp my mind is. I speak at a thousand miles an hour. I'll hold a discussion or a debate with anyone.

It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.

Liberals are sometimes defined as people who can't take their own side in an argument.

You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

I welcome opposing viewpoints, but I should warn you that you'll be facing off against the 2nd-place finisher at the 1981 Charleston County High-School Debate Tournament. And whatever became of that county champ who argued in favor of tractor safety modifications? Last time I checked, she didn't have her own show.

I saw, he was in a different league on a different planet. Everybody says we need substance in these debates, you've got it. You've got it from [Ted] Cruz.

The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate.

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

I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.

Poetry is a man arguing with himself; rhetoric is a man arguing with others.

I worry about Rick Perry. One, he's too conservative, Two, his debating skills. And three ... Oh crap, what was three?

[John Adams] is impressed with [Tomas] Jefferson's learning, but noted his silence during the debates in the Congress: "I never heard him utter three Sentences together."

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

We wouldn't be successful if we didn't have independent thinkers who can argue and then resolve their arguments.

The problem with these presidential debates like this is that you can't really prepare for them, because the questions are so individual and personal or even idiosyncratic. Secretary Hillary Clinton has a lot richer and deeper experience in doing these, obviously, than Donald Trump.

I taught my executive team how to argue.

Whenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate, it is an implicit concession they have lost the fight

[T]he seeds of [the Argument Culture] can be found our classrooms, where a teacher will introduce an article or an idea . . . setting up debates where people learn not to listen to each other because they're so busy trying to win the debate.

I don't ever remember being able to debate with my parents. Even though I thought of myself as a very bright kid, I couldn't be vocal in that way.

Ernestine Rose was one of the best lecturers of her time. No orthodox man could meet her in debate.