Christopher Lehmann-Haupt Quotes

I'm an academic. I'm hardwired for a good debate.

October will not provide a wholesome atmosphere for discussion of such a question.

There are truths to be discovered, but they are complex and many-sided; the best way to get to them is by engaging contrary ideas in a manner approximating dialogue.

I want to bring meaningful conversations to the table, and I want to shake some things up.

All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.

Data can set you free.

If I'm saying something with an intelligent background, then at least it is creating conversation. Whether that conversation is people agreeing or disagreeing, I'm happy.

At the heart of every great movie is conflict. It's the same with a meeting. There should be conflict and tension.

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

I enjoy a challenge or provocation, something to think about, to talk about after it's done.

Argument is to me the air I breathe.

I have always thought that the best way to find out what is right and what is not right, what should be done and what should not be done, is not to give a sermon, but to talk and discuss, and out of discussion sometimes a little bit of truth comes out.

The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and defence.

I think the act of talking about something - with a friend, or someone in your family, or someone you care about, and you're discussing something that you both admire - can often sharpen your thoughts about what you've read or seen and help you think more clearly about it.

In a discussion, the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it.

I don't like debates anyway. I have never debated anyone, I think they're a very masculine form - like an intellectual prizefight. They let you know who the better debater is but they don't really tell you about the issue. It's all heat, but no light.

To be interesting, one has to provoke.

...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.

One never lives so intensely as when one has been thinking hard.

The purpose of debates is to explore issues, not end them.

A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it. Partaking of the universal community of minds, it infiltrates, grafts itself on to, the mind of him who it refutes, among other contiguous ideas, with the aid of which, counter-attacking, he complements and corrects it; so that the final verdict is always to some extent the work of both parties to a discussion.

The information was correct but the interpretations were not.

If you don't ask the right question, every answer seems wrong -

The understanding of some men is clear, that of others brilliant. The former illumines its surroundings; the latter obscures them.

I dare anyone to debate me on things.