Debating Skills Quotes

Young gentlemen, who are to display their knowledge to the world, should have every motive of emulation, should be formed into regular classes, should read and dispute together, should have all the honors, and, if one may say so, the pomp of learning set before them, to call up their ardor. It is their business, and they should apply to it as such.

Governor Romney is a good debater.

In presidential campaigns, experience as a candidate is an invaluable asset.

There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.

I argue very well. Just ask any of my remaining friends.

When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book.

Mostly, we argued about who which of us was better at arguing, and particularly about who had won the previous argument.

Do not answer [William Jennings] Bryan. Attack him!

In arguing too, the parson own'd his skill, For e'en though vanquish'd he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around; And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew.

Verbally, I'm quite fast on my feet. I could embarrass or anger most people if I wanted to.

I welcome opposing viewpoints, but I should warn you that you'll be facing off against the 2nd-place finisher at the 1981 Charleston County High-School Debate Tournament. And whatever became of that county champ who argued in favor of tractor safety modifications? Last time I checked, she didn't have her own show.

The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate.

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

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

The noble lord is the Rupert of debate.

Vidal was a novelist, an essayist, a playwright, a screenwriter, and many other things. Buckley started a magazine, hosted a TV show, lead a political movement, and was a master debater. They were multihyphenates in a way that you rarely see anymore.

[John Adams] is impressed with [Tomas] Jefferson's learning, but noted his silence during the debates in the Congress: "I never heard him utter three Sentences together."

I am the first to admit that I am no great orator or no person that got where I have gotten by any William Jennings Bryan technique.

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

It's not enough to be right because he [Rick Perry] is right, you got to be persuasively right, got to be intellectually agile, and I think he can do it.

we have not been impressed with any attribute of the Senate other than its appearance and manners. We have heard the best speakers: they all fire off speeches which deal with the entire subject in general terms and which do not attempt to debate, to answer opponents' arguments or offer new points for discussion. And the speeches are constantly degenerating into empty rhetoric; they abound in quotations from well-known authors or from their own former speeches.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy rode a superior televised debate performance to victory over Richard Nixon.

I wouldn't want to debate me every day.

When you campaign and have to participate in so many debates just to the win the nomination of your party, you've had a lot of practice. You get to figure out as you go from one debate to another where you made your mistakes. By the time you get to the big debate you're pretty polished.

I was always interested in law at school; it was a great outlet to argue but not make anyone angry!