Disputation Quotes

What doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism! ~ George Berkeley

The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdom of God; and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects; leavingthe world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural Reason. ~ Thomas Hobbes

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" asked the Christian theologian Tertullian ... Having received the revealed thruth via Christ, "we want no curious disputation." Well that was then. Today science is so powerful that theologians can't casually dismiss secular knowledge. For most ... Athens and Jerusalem must be reconciled or Jerusalem will fall off the map. Philo's thoughtful answer is 'Logos') ~ Robert Wright

The itch of disputation will prove the scab of the Church. ~ Henry Wotton

The faster you strip cultures down, the more you find contrariness and disputation, rather than a solid core, until eventually you reach the individual, a mammal shaped by evolution, material needs, cognitive biases and historical circumstances no doubt, but still a creature with a better right to state his opinions than kings and clerics have to silence them. ~ Nick Cohen

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking ~ George Eliot

I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian... The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat - which wasn't there. 'That may be,' said the philosopher, 'but a theologian would have found it. ~ Julian Huxley

Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into disputation, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Therefore the Sophists, with courageous sauciness, pronounce the reassuring words, "Don't be bluffed!" and diffuse the rationalistic doctrine, "Use your understanding, your wit, your mind, against everything; it is by having a good and well-drilled understanding that one gets through the world best, provides for himself the best lot, the pleasantest life." Thus they recognize in mind man's true weapon against the world. This is why they lay such stress on dialectic skill, command of language, the art of disputation, etc. They announce that mind is to be used against everything; but they are still far removed from the holiness of the Spirit, for to them it is a means, aweapon, as trickery and defiance serve children for the same purpose; their mind is the unbribable understanding. ~ Max Stirner

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. ~ Peter Abelard

The political nature of man made it highly unlikely that a society designed to meet regularly would remain peaceable. "The way to make friends quarrel is to pit them in disputation under the public eye," Jefferson said. ~ Jon Meacham

In the "Republic," Plato vigorously attacked the oral, poetized form as a vehicle for communicating knowledge. He pleaded for a more precise method of communication and classification ("The Ideas"), one which would favor the investigation of facts, principles of reality, human nature, and conduct. What the Greeks meant by "poetry" was radically different from what we mean by poetry. Their "poetic" expression was a product of a collective psyche and mind. The mimetic form, a technique that exploited rhythm, meter and music, achieved the desired psychological response in the listener. Listeners could memorize with greater ease what was sung than what was said. Plato attacked this method because it discouraged disputation and argument. It was in his opinion the chief obstacle to abstract, speculative reasoning - he called it "a poison, and an enemy of the people. ~ Marshall McLuhan

And if several of the more difficult sciences are still [pg 023] in so defective a state; if not only so little is proved, but disputation has not terminated even about the little which seemed to be so; the reason perhaps is, that men's logical notions have not yet acquired the degree of extension, or of accuracy, requisite for the estimation of the evidence proper to those particular departments of knowledge. ~ John Stuart Mill

And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means better
[than mere disputation], unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong [and
injury]: but say, "We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in
that which came down to you; Our Allah and your Allah is one; and it is to Him
we bow [in Islam]. ~ Abdullah Yusuf Ali

Rests at Ephesus; and moreover John, who was both a witness and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord, and being a priest wore the sacerdotal plate. He also sleeps at Ephesus. 4. So much concerning their death. And in the Dialogue of Caius which we mentioned a little above, Proclus, against whom he directed his disputation, in agreement with what has been quoted, speaks thus concerning the death of ~ Eusebius

Like many men who experience fatherhood relatively late in life, Martin Luther was a devoted parent. Luther wrote his children letters of touching intensity, patiently converting the joys of the Christian life into a language of storytelling fit for the very young. A home with children brought out the best in Luther in a way that theological disputation patently did not. ~ Andrew Pettegree

Would it not therefore be wiser in moral concerns to acquiesce in the judgement of common reason, or at most only to call in philosophy for the purpose of rendering the system of morals more complete and intelligible, and its rules more convenient for use (especially for disputation), but not so as to draw off the common understanding from its happy simplicity, or to bring it by means of philosophy into a new path of inquiry and instruction? ~ Immanuel Kant

I understand thy kisses, and thou mine, And that's a feeling disputation. ~ William Shakespeare

If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. ~ Benjamin Franklin

But the art of sophistry, which the Greeks cultivated, is a fantastic power, which makes false opinions like true by means of words. For it produces rhetoric in order to persuasion, and disputation for wrangling. These arts, therefore, if not conjoined with philosophy, will be injurious to every one. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

The question of the position of man, as an animal, has given rise to much disputation, with the result of proving that there is no anatomical or developmental character by which he is more widely distinguished from the group of animals most nearly allied to him, than they are from one another. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Academical disputation gives vigor and briskness to the mind thus exercised, and relieves the languor of private study and meditation. ~ Isaac Watts

Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing and another that, but both agree unreservedly that the text itself is impeccable, and neither in the midst of the most violent disputation would venture to accuse the other of doubt. To call a man a doubter in these parts is equal to accusing him of cannibalism. Even the infidel Scopes himself is not charged with any such infamy. ~ H.L. Mencken

This disputation would be needful against freethinkers (les Libertins). We are agreed on this point and those who are so mad as to contradict it can only rest their contradiction on the Scripture itself, contradicting themselves before contradicting the Scripture, using it in the very protestation which they make that they will not use it. ~ Francis De Sales

They who strive to build up a firm faith in Scripture through disputation are doing things backwards. ~ John Calvin

Whom then to love? Whom to have faith in?
Who can there be who won't betray?
Who'll judge a deed or disputation
Obligingly by what we say?
Who'll not bestrew our path with slander?
Who'll cosset us with care and candour?
Oh, ineffectual phantom seeker
You waste your energy in vain:
Love your own self, be your own man,
My worthy, venerable reader!
A worthwhile object: surely who
Could be more lovable than you? ~ Alexander Pushkin

I am not fond of disputation; I have no alternative. ~ Mencius

A lot of Americans have some view of the Constitution as just this thing that was handed down [intact]. But it really was the result of months and months of wrangling and disputation and ultimately compromise. That's where the brilliance of the American system is
it's always been built on compromise. ~ Bill Vaughan

Aristotle can be regarded as the father of logic. But his logic is too scholastic, full of subtleties, and fundamentally has not been of much value to the human understanding. It is a dialectic and an organon for the art of disputation. ~ Immanuel Kant

A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation. ~ Stephen Fry