Debate Strategy Quotes

Well, to tell you truth, I have learned a long time ago that the trick when doing a debate, any kind of debate, is to just turn off the judgment switch in my head.

In a campaign, impressions can be much more important than facts and debate.

When I went on Fox News people asked me why I was going on those shows. Are you kidding? You have to go, especially to people you don't agree with.

He who frames the question wins the debate.

The thing that I try to remember is that in the briefing room it's not a debate. I'm not supposed to go in there and win a debate with the press corps. If that's what I try to do, then I'm going to lose.

Ronald Reagan's advisors know that if he goes to sleep for even five minutes during the second debate, he'll be in trouble.

Successful argument is a communication between the acknowledged authority of both parties to the argument.

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.

If we don't believe in moral absolutes and then we get into a cultural-political debate, how are we going to win?

To pull off successful attacks in debates, you have to execute with nuance and subtlety. It has to be artful.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump is going to get tough questions from the press and has to answer them.

I can't wait to see the debate between Ryan and Joe Biden. Biden is said to be already trying out different strategies. So far the one that Obama likes is where Biden pretends to have food poisoning and they cancel the debate.

To invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is an art worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae.

And by the way I don't object if people want to attack me, that's their right. All I'm suggesting that it's not going to be very effective and that people are going to get sick of it very fast. And the guys who attacked each other in the debates up to now, every single one of them have lost ground by attacking.

For my own part, I believe that in dealing with skeptics, and unbelievers, and enemies of the Bible, Christians are too apt to stand only on the defensive. They are too often content with answering this or that little objection, or discussing this or that little difficulty, which is picked out of Scripture and thrown in their teeth. I believe we ought to act on the aggressive far more than we do, and to press home on the adversaries of [Biblical] inspiration the enormous difficulties of their own position.

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.

John Kerry says that he wants to debate President Bush once a month until the election. This could be a risky move for Senator Kerry. If Bush doesn't show up for the debates, John Kerry may end up debating an empty chair. And that could be pretty much a toss up as to which one has the better personality.

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

There is plenty of time to argue with new ideas later. They key is to take careful notes first and debate second.

Republican presidential debates have become contests of who can terrify viewers the most.

Get every candidate to wear a NASCAR racing suit when they go debate; this way we can see how their sponsors really are.

Because if you look at the debates now, and I have answered it except for 90 seconds by and large it's been viewed as every debate I have had I have been among the best people. And in some cases people argue the best person in those debates. I have been asked questions you never could have anticipated.

I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension.

By the rules of debate, if you lose your cool, you've lost the game.

One of the candidates at the early GOP debate, George Pataki, said his routine before every debate is to drink a diet lemon Snapple iced tea and pray. Which is also the advice Chris Christie gets from his doctor.