Using insult instead of argument is the sign of a small mind.
If you are strong, and if you have a strong logic, you can convince people by your ideas. Torture means your logic is very weak, so you need power to impose on others.
There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.
I do not propose to criticize the fatuous argument I have just outlined; here, to expound is to expose.
If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.
One could drive a prairie schooner through any part of his argument and never scrape against a fact.
If you have to lie, cheat, steal, obstruct and bully to get your point across, it must not be a point capable of surviving on its own merits.
Who is apt, on occasion, to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.
The god excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument.
If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.
There are directors who, their direction is high, but then when you challenge it, it crumbles. They can't back up what they're asking.
The argument holds no water at all, not even a thimbleful.
Logic is a feeble reed, friend.
It doesn't stand up to huge intellectual scrutiny.
Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.
A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.
