Skip Bayless Quotes

Dick Durbin's a worthy opponent on any debate. He's very intelligent, quick. Knows his facts and puts them forward well.

One-hundred facts about Vietnam and we studied the fact sheet and got in to these arguments and it was fantastic, and I remember one moment when we heard two students saying don't talk to those guys, meaning my brother and me. They've just memorized that stupid fact sheet. And we thought, gosh do we sound that good? It didn't seem possible. But that was my introduction to politics.

I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these, I chose the conflicts of disputation rather than the trophies of war.

Debates require a lot of hard work and preparation. If you try to wing it, it shows.

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy.

In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue - it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues.

Anything can go wrong in a debate, and Obama is not a perfect debater.

What they can expect always is that they're going to be made to think.

Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.

A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill-informed respecting a question; all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate, but speak he must; and if he is a man of talents, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully.

The purpose of oratory or philosophy [is to] respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.

Philosophy is a performance sport - you have to play it with somebody back and forth.

I'm going to be a guy who can defend a bunch of different positions.

I was on the debate team.

I will sit there on the air and look at every position and play devil's advocate.

There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.

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 important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.

The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall.

Whoever in debate quotes authority uses not intellect, but memory.

You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best loved ideas.

Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.

The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses.

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

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.