Quotes: Argument.

NOTE: The statement in bold-face is a brief summary of the quote, or the quote stands by itself and needs no simplification. The number to the left is the page number.

Argument
Argument 260 "Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours." Goethe. Early 19th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Argument 260 "Nothing was ever learned by either side in a dispute." Hazlitt. 1820. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Argument 260 "It is labor in vain to dispute with a man…." Anon. Early 18th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Argument 261 Arguments are between personalities, not on issues. "Some have wondered that disputes about opinions should so often end in personalities; but the fact is, that such disputes begin with personalities; for our opinions are a part of ourselves; besides, after the first contradiction it is ourselves, and not the thing, we maintain." Edward Fitzgerald. 1852. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Argument 262 "Every word that we utter rouses its contrary." Goethe. Early 19th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Argument 156 "A wager is a fool's argument; betting marks the fool." French. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Argument 26 An argument that divided friends, professors and priests. "This argument over which dear friends grew to hate each other and about which professors tried to crack the skulls of priests, was briefly this: Can living things arise spontaneously, or does every living thing have to have parents?" DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Argument 81 Pasteur's experiments won him many arguments. "Many times Pasteur won his arguments by brilliant experiments that simply floored everyone." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Argument 95 Contrasting types of arguments. "...became loud public answers to such objections--rather than calm quests after facts." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Argument 116 Don't talk, just show. "But Koch didn’t lecture--he was never much at talking--instead of telling them that his microbes were the true cause of anthrax, he showed these sophisticated professors." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Argument 122 Answered objections before they were brought up. "Up till this time Koch had had very little criticism or opposition from other men of science, mainly because he almost never opened his mouth until he was sure of his results...told of his discoveries with disarming modesty and his work was so unanswerably complete--he had a way of seeing the objections that critics might make and replying to them in advance." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Argument 133 One way of arguing. "...with no oratorical raisings of his [Koch’s] voice...." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Argument 142 Answering doubters before they had a chance to doubt. "Koch was as coldly logical as a textbook of geometry...systematic experiments... and he thought of all the objections that doubters might make before such doubters knew that there was anything to have doubts about." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Argument 180 Unlawyerlike: giving all the fors and againsts the issue. "...a most unlawyerlike report reciting all of the fors and againsts on the question of whether or no this new bacillus was the cause of diphtheria." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Argument 216 Arguing with oneself. "Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in conscience, and alarmed lest Godfrey’s accusation should be true—lest he should be raising his own will as an obstacle to Eppie’s good." George Eliot, Silas Marner.

Argument vs. quest for knowledge 119 Wordy brawls vs. quiet quests for knowledge. " ...the baby science of microbe hunting which up till now had been as much a wordy brawl as a quest for knowledge." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.