Best Debating Quotes & Sayings

When they come to chronicle the decline of this civilization," he said, "they're going to wonder why we were debating flag burning, abortion, and broccoli eating instead of the fundamental issues of how we live and use the environment. — James Howard Kunstler

I was debating on jumping and ending my despair over losing my best friend, but I decided to call you instead. — Holly Hood

In the summer of 2007, I was sitting in a studio in Dublin, debating with a lay spokesman of the Roman Catholic Church who turned out to be the only believing Christian on a discussion panel of five people. He was a perfectly nice and rather modest logic-chopping polemicist, happy enough to go for a glass of refreshment after the program, and I suddenly felt a piercing stab of pity for him. A generation ago in Ireland, the Church did not have to lower itself in this way. It raised its voice only slightly, and was instantly obeyed by the Parliament, the schools, and the media. It could and did forbid divorce, contraception, the publication of certain books, and the utterance of certain opinions. Now it is discredited and in decline. Its once-absolute doctrines appear ridiculous: — Christopher Hitchens

Meanings with no purpose are useful for meaningless debates on what the "meaner" meant. And that's what #politics is all about - misreading. — Will Advise

Understand that wisdom is higher than intellect and discretion is higher than debating. — Nirmala Srivastava

I am debating about you, totally stumped between boxers and briefs." She winked.
He shot her his sexiest look. "Let me know when you're ready for the big reveal. — Tracy March

Though, in debating with regard to theories, it be lawful to say whether this or that is consistent with the Divine attributes, yet, when we find that God has actually done any thing, all question about its justice, wisdom, and benevolence, is forever out of place. — Nehemiah Adams

The secular world often finds its constituents disenfranchised and solitary as it has spent a great deal of time debating the religious community while failing to build a true community of its own. — Chris Matakas

The thing that strikes me more and more, is the extraordinary viciousness and dishonesty of political controversy in our time. I don't mean merely that controversies are acrimonious. They ought to be that when they are on serious subjects. I mean that almost nobody seems to feel that an opponent deserves a fair hearing or that the objective truth matters as long as you can score a neat debating point. — George Orwell

When I came to Harvard, I was debating between math and science, and I guess I thought in the end I wanted something that could connect to the real world. I liked puzzle-solving and connections. — Lisa Randall

A bridge-like CIO has the mind to think via the multidimensional lens, the gut to innovate fearlessly; the strategy to lead wisely and the skill to move progressively. — Pearl Zhu

I look at Verve who looks back with big eyes as if she knows what I'm debating. "Ok, you win. I'll make a fishing pole. — Stone Marshall

One thing I've done in my life is train year-round to compete at anything, anything. I've got an invitation now to maybe be on the karate team for the Barcelona Olympics. I'm debating whether I want to do that. I just love to compete, and I want to win. — Herschel Walker

Debating the best way to do something we shouldn't be doing in the first place is a sure way to end up in the wrong place. — David Suzuki

Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is still in print. They're debating right now over Mark Twain. He's still available. Winslow Homer can still be seen. Our arts are - they're there. We got to go get them and understand that this is an important legacy for our country. — Wynton Marsalis

What makes a good book?
Scholars and critics have been debating that question for decades. I like books that touch my head and my heart at the same time. — Jane Yolen

Keep your head down, avoid all the distractions of being a writer today-all the shifts in the business, all the drama, all the debating about where publishing is going-and write the best story that you can. It sounds a bit glib, but I think this is advice a lot of people are having trouble following right now. It is so hard to focus. But that is the single key to success. — Jeff Abbott

It was a tough school. The kids on the debating team took steroids! — Milton Berle

When I told my mother that I have to give a talk, and was debating what could I possibly say to non-mathematicians, she said: "You got what to wear?". — Richard A. Falk

We don't always agree on stuff, but when it's time to blow the whistle and start the game, we're not still debating. — Rick Wagoner

When I'm debating others, whether it's Eleanor Clift or Bob Beckel, you're still in a fierce debate mode, but you're also on best behavior. — Monica Crowley

In debating the respective merits of dogs and cats, not having to walk a cat when it's 20 below zero deserves consideration. — Doug Larson

For Abby, "friend" is a word whose sharp corners have been worn smooth by overuse. "I'm friends with the guys in IT," she might say, or "I'm meeting some friends after work."

But she remembers when the word "friend" could draw blood. She and Gretchen spent hours ranking their friendships, trying to determine who was a best friend and who was an everyday friend, debating whether anyone could have two best friends at the same time, writing each other's names over and over in purple ink, buzzed on the dopamine high of belonging to someone else, having a total stranger choose you, someone who wanted to know you, another person who cared that you were alive. — Grady Hendrix

Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it. — Alan Valentine

Social Security should be phased out and ended altogether ... Social Security in any form is morally irredeemable. We should be debating, not how to save Social Security, but how to end it - how to phase it out so as to best protect both the rights of those who have paid into it, and those who are forced to pay for it today. This will be a painful task. But it will make possible a world in which Americans enjoy far greater freedom to secure their own futures. — Alex Epstein

I don't remember debates. I don't think we spent a lot of time debating it. Maybe we did, but I don't remember. — George W. Bush

Most Pakistani politics is conducted within a narrow spectrum. Politicians spend much time debating the best ways to fight India, or take Kashmir, or dominate Afghanistan, or punish the United States for its real and imagined sins. — Stephen Kinzer

I come from a documentary background and my natural tendency, as a filmmaker, is to make a movie, if I have something to talk about. If it's not about anything that matters, I don't feel like doing it. I'm not against people who make movies just for fun, but I'm not one of those guys. I just want to provoke thinking and debating about certain issues. — Jose Padilha

On Work and Charity
Likewise (Maria) watched (Martin's) toils and knew the measure of the midnight oil he burned. Work! She knew that he outdid her, though his work was of a different order. And she was surprised to behold that the less food he had, the harder he worked. On occasion, in a casual sort of way, when she thought hunger pinched hardest, she would send him in a loaf of new baking, awkwardly covering the act with banter to the effect that it was better than he could bake. And again, she would send one of her toddlers in to him with a great pitcher of hot soup, debating inwardly the while whether she was justified in taking it from the mouths of her own flesh and blood. Nor was Martin ungrateful, knowing as he did the lives of the poor, and that it ever in the world there was charity, this was it. — Jack London

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious-that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. — Dan Brown

You get some sleep, Abigail," Townsend told her. "I'll keep watch."
"That's very gracious of you, but being that we're on an airplane ... "
Even after the plane took off, they kept debating security perimeters and protocols. I'm pretty sure they argued for forty-five minutes about where the best place for cappuccino was near the Colosseum. — Ally Carter

I once heard the survivors of a colony of ants that had been partially obliterated by a cow's foot seriously debating the intention of the gods towards their civilization. — Don Marquis

Hot pink, I'm sure she spent a few minutes debating it - was she tan enough, maybe the navy silky sleeveless top instead, can't go wrong with navy - and over her shoulder, a cognac Prada the exact same shade as her shoes, the perfect match more age revealing than the skin starting to pucker in her neck. She had at least ten years on me, I determined, relieved. — Jessica Knoll

There is an air of unreality in debating these arcane points when the world is changing in such dramatic ways right in front of our eyes because of global warming. — Al Gore

Television is the original social network. Consumers love great television, but they also love talking about television. Sharing with friends the thrill of the last episode, debating what will happen next, working to enlist friends to watch the same shows that you love. — Michael K. Powell

[In high school] my interests outside my academic work were debating, tennis, and to a lesser extent, acting. I became intensely interested in astronomy and devoured the popular works of astronomers such as Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, from which I learnt that a knowledge of mathematics and physics was essential to the pursuit of astronomy. This increased my fondness for those subjects. — Allan McLeod Cormack

I don't even pretend to believe I know everything; I just believe in arguments God told me I had a pretty good chance of winning, while I was traveling through hell. — Shannon L. Alder

Firecracker Gale and dandelion Peeta are so different from each other that it's easy to imagine that a girl who would choose Gale is a completely different person than one who would choose Peeta. When people sit around debating who Katniss should choose, maybe what they're really debating actually is her identity - and the romance is just a proxy for that big, hard question about the ever-changing, unaware girl on fire. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Our political parties exist for no other reason than to win power; they are not ideological debating societies designed to present a particular political philosophy and to persuade voters to accept it. — Tom Wicker

When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this state, stimulates me. But once a decision is made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own. — Colin Powell

There are truly only three situations in which debating someone on the left is worthwhile. First, you must: your grade depends on it, or your waiter threatens to spit in your food unless you tell him why same-sex marriage is a detriment to Western civilization. Second, you found an honest leftist actually willing to be convinced by solid argumentation. Congratulations! — Ben Shapiro

Debating religious beliefs are a red line, a deep red line. — Pope Shenouda III

I actually prepared Vice President Biden for his debate in the last election. I played Sarah Palin. It's a little tough debating a woman. — Jennifer Granholm

I have been in perturbation of mind for days, debating whether I shall write it, and now, having written, whether to send it. — Diana Gabaldon

Debating whether one trusts or not is a sign that one does not want to trust at all, and therefore is still incapable of it. — Idries Shah

One evening we were exploring the Baths of Caracalla together, while debating the question of merit or demerit in human behaviour and its rewards in life. As I was propounding some outrageous thesis or another in answer to the strictly orthodox and pious views put forward by him, his foot slipped and the next moment he was lying in a bruised condition at the bottom of a steep ruined staircase.
'Look at that for divine justice,' I said, helping him onto his feet. 'I blaspheme, you fall.'
This irreverence, accompanied by roars of laughter, apparently went to far, and thenceforth all religious arguments were banned. — Hector Berlioz

Based on the experience of history and civilization of mankind, which is more important for Muslims today, to no longer busy discussing the greatness that Muslims achieved in the past, or debating who first discovered the number zero, including the number one, two, three and so on, as the contribution of Muslims in the writing of numbers in this modern era and the foundation and development of civilizations throughout the world. But how Muslims will regained the lead and control of science and technology, leading back and become a leader in the world of science and civilization, because it represents a real achievement. — Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie

Go back 2,400 years, and you can hear it from the Athenian orator Demosthenes as he chastises his fellow citizens for responding to Macedonian aggression by "forever debating the question and never making any progress" and issuing "empty decrees." "All words, apart from action," Demosthenes warned, "seem vain and idle, especially from Athenian lips: for the greater our reputation for a ready tongue, the greater the distrust it inspires in all men." We've had several years now of watching Obama and his foreign policy team prove this eternal truth as they have feebly and fecklessly responded to crisis after crisis in Ukraine, Syria, and a dozen other venues. — Anonymous