Although We Argue Quotes & Sayings

I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are
an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew. — Donald Barthelme

It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers, and declaim against the wickedness of times present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do, without the borrowed help and satire of times past; condemning the vices of their own times, by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal, and Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem to indigitate and point at our times. - SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Pseudodoxia Epidemica. That — George Eliot

The General Cemetery's unwritten motto is All the Names, although it should be said that, in fact, these three words fit the Central Registry like a glove, because it is there that all the names are to be found, both those of the dead and those of the living, while the cemetery, given its role as ultimate destination and ultimate depository, has to content itself only with the names of the dead. This mathematical evidence, however, is not enough to silence the keepers of the General Cemetery who, confronted by what they call their apparent numerical inferiority, usually shrug their shoulders and argue, With time and patience everyone ends up here, the Central Registry, from this point of view, is merely a tributary of the General Cemetery. — Jose Saramago

Having a gut instinct that told me how to be a moral person might be evolutionarily handy. On the other hand, emotional moral judgment also enables people to do really horrible things to each other, like lynching or "honor" killings, and justify them by calling them "moral." Because sociopaths don't experience morality emotionally, I would argue that we are freed to be more rational and more tolerant. There is something to be said for the impartiality of pure reason - religion-created mass hysteria among the supposedly mentally healthy populace has resulted in much worse damage and carnage in the world than anything sociopaths have caused. (Although I imagine that there may sometimes be sociopaths at the head of it all, whipping up the masses to do their bidding.) — M.E. Thomas

The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands. — Francisco Varela

They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me
that these are a fiction from first to last.
O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth.
Then perish the fools who forged the religious traditions or interpreted them! — Al-Ma'arri

Limiting the power of government, in order to liberate the individual, was the great American revolutionary insight. Too much cooperation, avoiding conflict from ordinary people, these things aren't acceptable in America although they may suit China, Indonesia, Britain, or Germany just fine. In America the absence of conflict is a sign of regression toward a global mean, hardly progress by our lights if you've seen much of the governance of the rest of the world where common people are crushed like annoying insects if they argue. — John Taylor Gatto

The past never went away and it was not designed to do so.
It would always be there, and it should be acknowledged. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Although some lesbians argue that butches have nothing to do with "being a man," others insist that their butchness is or was only a route to a desired status as a man. These paradoxes have surely proliferated in recent years,
offering evidence of a kind of gender trouble that the text itself did not
anticipate. — Judith Butler

Rock and Roll has certainly tried to take its toll on me. I'd rather not talk about my past excesses here, although some hardcore rockers might argue that those excesses were responsible for some great records, but I know which side I came out on. — Tony Visconti

Although the view that, once discovered, ideas can be imitated for free by anybody is pervasive, it is far from the truth. While it may occasionally be the case that an idea is acquired at no cost - ideas are generally difficult to communicate, and the resources for doing so are limited. It is rather ironic that a group of economists, who are also college professors and earn a substantial living teaching old ideas because their transmission is neither simple nor cheap, would argue otherwise in their scientific work. Most of the times imitation requires effort and, what is more important, imitation requires purchasing either some products or some teaching services from the original innovator, meaning that most spillovers are priced. — Michele Boldrin

Another way to describe the dilemma for religious faith is that pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability. While it is possible to believe in God, one has to work much harder at it because the framework of belief is no longer present to sustain it. The presumption of God and of his active presence in the world cannot be easily sustained because the most important symbols of social, economic, political, and aesthetic life no longer point to him. God is simply less obvious than he once was, and for most no longer obvious at all - quite the opposite. — James Davison Hunter

Some scholars argue that although the brain might contain neural subsystems, or modules, specialized for tasks like recognizing faces and understanding language, it also contains a part that constitutes a person, a self: the chief executive of all the subsystems. — Paul Bloom

You can argue whether it's right or wrong,' says Halfon about the scrapping of Connexions, 'and yes I believe we should be balancing the economy, but nevertheless the think-tank people never consider how it actually impacts on the front, although they do create an intellectual framework. — Owen Jones

In spite of their exhaustive sociological analyses of these various bureaucracies and how they did or did not represent the will of the working class or whether a political or economic revolution could bring workers to power, these Marxists never applied the same rigorous analyses to their own organizations. Implicit was always the assumption that their organization was somehow exempt from the pressures of society such as the racist and sexist muck that we are all raised with. They also held the assumption that their organization would not succumb to the very basic pressures society applies to all organizations, bureaucracies and institutions. — Anonymous

He likes to use his wit and verbal finesse to confuse others and win arguments. Although he can argue successfully that white is black and straight is crooked, you walk away with the feeling that he's won the argument not because he is correct but because you can't outwit him. — Liezi

When I got home, I told my dad the truth about Yazzie; I told him that he had belonged to Don and Nettie's grandson who was going into the Marine Corps, and he had given him to me because he couldn't keep him. Truth without embellishment, although one could argue that it was slightly abbreviated. My dad didn't seem to care where I'd gotten him.

"I've been thinking about getting a dog around here." My dad cooed as well as a gravely cowboy can. "He's a good boy, oh yes he is! He's a little beauty!"

What was it about babies and puppies that made everyone talk with their lips pushed out in that kissy-faced way? I left Yazzie in my dad's enthusiastic care and climbed up to my room — Amy Harmon

The surreal is as integral a part of our lives as the 'real,' although one might argue that, since the unconscious underlies consciousness, and we are continuously bombarded by images, moods, and memories from that uncharitable terrain, it is in fact more primary than the 'real. — Joyce Carol Oates

We learned about dignity and decency - that how hard you work matters more than how much you make ... that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself. — Michelle Obama

Most people seem to be interested in turning their dreams into reality. Then there are those who turn reality into dreams. I belong to the latter group. — Allen Say

Although the advice that you get if you got to see Margaret is 'stand up for yourself, shout back, and argue the toss and then she will respect you', the trouble is that sort of advice to the English middle-class male of a certain age doesn't actually help us very much because we've always been brought up to believe that it's extremely rude to shout back at women. — Julian Critchley

Kids instinctively know - although they will argue to the contrary - that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues. — Zig Ziglar

Critical and feminist theorists show that most leadership research, including studies of transformational leadership, continue to present prescriptions - heroic or post-heroic - as if they were gender neutral. The critics argue that, although there is a search for a different kind of leader- a 'post-heroic hero' who displays characteristics different from the traditional model - even this leader continues 'to enjoy the same godlike reverence for individualism associated with traditional models'. — Amanda Sinclair

It turns out that knitting isn't about the yarn or the softness or needing a hat (although we really can't argue with these secondary motivators). It's really about this: Knitting is a magic trick. In this day and age, in a world where science and technology take more and more wonder and work out of our lives , and our planet is quickly becoming a place running out of magic, a knitter takes silly, useless string, mundane sticks, waves her hands around (many, many times ... nobody said this was fast magic), and turns one thing into another: string into a hat, string into a sweater, string into a blanket for a baby. It really is a very reliable magic. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

As a necessary prerequisite to the creation of new forms of expression one might, I suppose, argue that current sensibilities respond uniquely to the notion of exhaustion as exhaustion, although that does de facto seem rather limiting. — Brian Ferneyhough

Although such research [into the paranormal] has yet to produce anything in the way of a repeatable controlled experiment, its practitioners argue that its revolutionary potentialities justify its continuation. My own feeling is that after a century of total failure it has become a bloody bore. — Dennis Flanagan

Some persons hold that, while it is proper for the lawgiver to encourage and exhort men to virtue on moral grounds, in the expectation that those who have had a virtuous moral upbringing will respond, yet he is bound to impose chastisement and penalties on the disobedient and ill-conditioned, and to banish the incorrigible out of the state altogether. For (they argue) although the virtuous man, who guides his life by moral ideals, will be obedient to reason, the base, whose desires are fixed on pleasure, must be chastised by pain, like a beast of burden. — Aristotle.

In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its partner. This astounding legacy of our combined status as mammals and neural beings is limbic revision: the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love, as our Attractors activate certain limbic pathways, and the brain's inexorable memory mechanism reinforces them. Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love. — Thomas Lewis

And scholars of the mystical, or esoteric, or inner teachings of the world's Great Traditions are fairly unanimous in saying that although the outer teachings of each tradition are considerably different, often even contradictory, the inner esoteric teachings, the teachings based not on beliefs but on direct spiritual experiences of Waking Up, show a remarkable similarity in what they say, which is why the mystics of virtually all the world's religions have great ease in understanding each other, even as their exoteric brethren argue themselves silly. — Ken Wilber

We actually form the world at every instant, although we're not cognitively aware of that but - and there are people would argue with that to some degree. — Robert Irwin

I would reply that religion had nothing to do with it. I am in fact pretty much an Atheist like my mother's father, although I kept that to myself. Why argue somebody else out of the expectation of some sort of an Afterlife? — Kurt Vonnegut

Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in practice they diverge. If we believe that the methods of science can be used to discriminate between fundamental pictures of reality, we are led to a strictly materialist conception of the universe. While the details of modern cosmology are not a necessary part of this argument, they provide interesting clues as to how an ultimate picture may be constructed. — Sean Carroll

Look, we can stand out here and argue about it for the next ten minutes, but you're getting in this truck."
My eyes narrowed. "Let me remind you of something. I don't know you. Like at all."
"And I'm not asking you to get naked and give me a private show." Pausing, his gaze seemed to drift down my body again. "Although, that is way interesting. A bad idea, but way interesting. — J. Lynn

I wouldn't say my mother was my best friend, because that sounds odd, but we have a really tight bond and she is my friend on Facebook. Although she only goes on it to check up on me and sometimes we argue about it. — Dionne Bromfield

It's not really a practical dream to have, is it?
He stares right at me. It's intense, being under the weight of his full attention. Dreams have to be practical? — Hannah Harrington