Diogenes Quotes

There are two sides to every question, exactly opposite to each other.

As a Jew, I believe that every argument has a counterargument.

Let’s never forget that whatever brilliant ideas you have or hear, that the opposite may also be true.

You may be wrong, but you may be right.

By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.

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.

You know, I've taught philosophy for years and one argues in the hypothetical all the time.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Even a sheet of paper has two sides.

It is the fact of life that a truth emerges out of a conflict between two wrongs.

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

I don't do formal debates, because formal debates where you have two people up on a stage in equal status, and each of them is given 20 minutes to give their point of view, and then 10 minutes for a rebuttal, or whatever, that creates the illusion that you really do have here two equal points of view of equal scientific standing.

I am not by any means a philosopher, although I have worked with some talented people in the discipline. But certain philosophical concepts deeply inform the way I think about the world. The idea of 'opposing truths at extremes' is a powerful concept that I came to appreciate in my twenties.

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

Without precisely defined sources, methods, and concepts, it is possible to see absolutely everything and its opposite.

The opposite of every truth is just as true.

In two opposite opinions, if one be perfectly reasonable, the other can't be perfectly right.

For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.

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.

Who ever asked theses and antitheses if they want to become syntheses?

If you have a correct statement, then the opposite of a correct statement is of course an incorrect statement, a wrong statement. But when you have a deep truth, then the opposite of a deep truth may again be a deep truth.

When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.

He who knows only his own side of the case (argument) knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion

You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.