Rational Discussion Quotes

Honest difference of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy among free men.

How is it possible for someone who believes that the world was created in six days to have a rational conversation with me, who doesn't believe that, about other possibilities?

I think we should be very clear on this. You know, this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment... It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can't lose that in this country. We've got to get it back.

I am passionate about truth and passionate about clarity, and I don't regard myself as particularly militant or aggressive. I simply wish to discuss what is true and to listen to evidence and put evidence forward to other people and have a sensible, sane, moderated argument.

In the sports world it's all about argument. It's all about having a hot take. The other person has to have the polar opposite opinion, and you bash them together. To me it is an outlier to have a conversation be the basis of why you are listening.

The belief that value judgments are not subject, in the last analysis, to rational control, encourages the inclination to make irresponsible assertions regarding right and wrong or good and bad. One evades discussion of serious issues by the simple device of passing them off as value problems, whereas, to say the least, many of these conflicts arose out of man's very agreement regarding values.

I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the question of where God is, why we are created and where does life go, why we exist. That sort of thing. And it is very hard to talk about it these days, because it cannot be proven. It is hard to discuss it rationally.

If you want to give me a good faceful for one of my political positions, I can take it.

I enjoy a good reasoned argument. I love the power of logic.

Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument - as in having a fight.

Now I must give one smirk and then we may be rational again

You explain right well, and you shew that you understand argument and are not a mere sophist since you accept that which cannot be denied.

There is nothing wanting to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.

Additional problems are the offspring of poor decisions. When inquiry and advocacy are combined, the goal is no longer 'to win the argument', but to find the best argument.

Try handling problems in the office as dispassionately as you can and I guarantee you will have a better time of it; not least because when you bring emotion into the conversation, you furnish your colleagues with an easy "out" for dismissing you. If you are able to strip out the emotion, however, people have to deal with you based on the facts.

The sounder your argument, the more satisfaction you get out of it.

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.

Unfortunately, most gun control advocates are not really interested in rational debate, and their political games simply send Alice chasing white rabbits down holes.

Why would anybody be intimidated by mere words? I mean, neither I nor any other athiest that I know ever threatens violence. We never threaten to fly planes into skyscrapers. We never threaten suicide bombs. We are very gentle people. All we do is use words to talk about things like the cosmos, the origin of the universe, evolution, the origin of life. What's there to be frightened of? It's just an opinion.

You can always reason with a German. You can always reason with a barnyard animal, too, for all the good it does.

When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions.

All I'm arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive, where there's no taboo against criticizing bad ideas, and where everyone who shows up, in order to get their ideas entertained, has to meet some obvious burdens of intellectual rigor and self-criticism and honesty-and when people fail to do that, we are free to stop listening to them. What religion has had up until this moment is a different set of rules that apply only to it, which is you have to respect my religious certainty even though I'm telling you I arrived at it irrationally.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

If there's intelligence behind an opinion, then I'm all for expressing it, but I would never just start a fight with someone for the sake of it - that's just not me.