Debatable Quotes & Sayings

How rich 'rich enough' is in a city like Delhi is debatable. — Neena Dass

If in a battle, I seize a bit of debatable land with a handful of soldiers, without having done anything to prevent an enemy bombardment of the position, would it ever occur to me to speak of a conquest of the terrain in question? Obviously not. Then why should I do so in chess? — Aron Nimzowitsch

It was a fair decision, the penalty, even though it was debatable whether it was inside or outside the box. — Bobby Charlton

The recovery movementis not primarily addressed to people who always knew about their sexual victimization. Its main intendedaudience is women who aren't at all sure that they were molested, and its purpose is to convince them of that face and embolden them to act upon it. As for genuine victims, the comfort they are proffered may look attractive at first, but it is of debatable long value. — Frederick Crews

Whether solid rockets are more or less likely to fail than liquid-fuel rockets is debatable. More serious, though, is that when they do fail, it's usually violent and spectacular. — Henry Spencer

It always seems as though the definition of love will remain debatable by an opinionated world. — Criss Jami

That does not mean that we must forego just and fair criticism, or refrain from opposition to policies which are debatable or which do not command our approval. — Bainbridge Colby

a packet of Jaffa Cakes is a binary object, by which I mean it has only two states: unopened or empty. There have been rumoured sightings of half packets, but the evidence is debatable. — Marty Jopson

Humor is not debatable. It's like sex. Either you're aroused or you're not. Nobody can reason you around to their point of view. — Jim Carrey

Parker fixated on the envelope's precise penmanship as she lifted it. Her grandmother rarely took the time to write her own name in the return address, let alone give it the aesthetic attention that this one so seemed to demand. Once, when Parker questioned her on this, her grandmother casually asserted that she "didn't quite believe in envelopes" as if this were a debatable concept like Socialism or wearing white after Labor Day. — Abby Slovin

Fighting positions, please, ladies ... '
'That's debatable,' Halt said in an undertone to Will as they stood watching ...
'The 'fighting' part or the 'ladies' part?' Will replied with a grin.
Halt looked at him and shook his head. 'Definitely the 'ladies,' he said. 'There's no debate about the 'fighting.'
Will shrugged. He knew there was an edginess to the girls' relationship and that it had something to do with him. Why that should be so was beyond him. — John Flanagan

The sign of a good marriage is that everything is debatable and challenged; nothing is turned into law or policy. The rules, if any, are known only to the two players, who seek no public trophies. — Carolyn Heilbrun

Very well," he said now. "Fighting positions, please, ladies..."
"That's debatable," Halt said in an undertone to Will as they stood watchingn. A number of the off-duty crew had gathered to watch as well. There was a certain enjoyment to be had in watching two extremely attractive girls trying to split each other's skulls open with wooden swords.
"The 'fighting' part or the 'ladies' part?" Will replied with a grin. Halt looked at him and shook his head. "Definitely the 'ladies,'" he said. "There's no debate about the fighting.'"

~Halt & Will about Evanlyn and Alyss — John Flanagan

Rather than trusting God, many will doggedly hold onto the belief that there is a divinely-designed formula or biblical methodology that can ensure their child's salvation, and then guarantee the child's sanctification. That debatable belief often leads to finding special methods in Scripture that come with a promise of success. Soon, though, the parents are no longer trusting God, because they no longer need to - they are trusting the methods instead. Those methods, then, can too easily become rules, and then legalism, and then a reliance on works that replaces a life of faith. — Clay Clarkson

There's math, and everything else is debatable! — Chris Rock

In the humanist world following Erasmus, man is at the centre of the universe. Man becomes largely responsible for his own destiny, behaviour and future. This is the new current of thought which finds its manifestation in the writing of the 1590s and the decades which follow. The euphoria of Elizabeth's global affirmation of authority was undermined in these years by intimations of mortality: in 1590 she was 57 years old. No one could tell how much longer her golden age would last; hence, in part, Spenser's attempts to analyse and encapsulate that glory in an epic of the age. This concern about the death of a monarch who - as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen - was both symbol and totem, underscores the deeper realisation that mortality is central to life. After the Reformation, the certainties of heaven and hell were less clear, more debatable, more uncertain. — Ronald Carter

What's your deal?" I asked in the hallway after class. "I know you did that."
He shrugged. "So?"
... "That was rude, Daemon. You embarrassed him." ... "And I thought using your ... stuff would draw them here?"
... "That was barley a blip on the map. That didn't even leave a trace on anyone."
He lowered his head until the edges of his dark curled brushed my cheek. I was caught between wanting to crawl into my locker or crawl into him. "Besides, I was doing you a favor."
I laughed. "And how was that doing me a favor?"
... "Studying math wasn't what he had in mind."
That was debatable, but I decided to play along ... "And what if that's the case?"
"You like Simon?" His chin jerked up, anger flashing in his emerald eyes. "You can't possibly like him."
... "Are you jealous? ... Your jealous of Simon?" I lowered my voice. "Of a human? For shame, Daemon. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

It is, perhaps, a debatable question, whether a person who has always been notoriously in the habit of lying, has a right to tell the truth; it is, of course, the only device by which he can deceive people. — George D. Prentice

The degree to which language exactly mirrors reality is debatable. — Rictor Norton

Obviously, we're all going to die at some point. Whether or not we are fated to die in some way I think is debatable. I just don't know which side to debate. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

It's not that I think you're weaker, I know you are." He eyed me over his glass of milk. " I'm not trying to be obnoxious by saying that. You are weaker than us."
"Maybe physically but not mentally or .. morally." I countered.
"Morally?" He sounded confused.
"Yeah, like, I'm not going to tell the world about you guys to get money. And if I was captured by an Arum, I wouldn't bring them back to you all."
"Wouldn't you?"
Offended, I leaned back and folded my arms. "No. I wouldn't"
"Even if your life was threatened?" Disbelief colored his tone.
"Shaking my head, I laughed. "Just because I'm human doesn't mean I'm a coward or unethical. I'd never do anything that would put Dee in danger. Why would my life be more valuable than hers? Now yours ... debatable. But not Dee. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Debatable how long the seduction took. The smarter the girl, the swifter these things go. Physical forwardness as intellectual high-wire act: the pleasure not of pleasure but of performance and revenge against the retainer, the flute, the stack of expectations. — Lauren Groff

Whether the human mind can advance or not, is a question too little discussed, for nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated. — G.K. Chesterton

From History to Chance
The river of time was flowing on its way, and I was swimming over its honey coloured surface with eyes closed. Does time move? It's debatable. But we definitely move, age to age, with time and away from it, from its unmoving faces. To see its new faces. In its widest, longest and strangest art gallery. — Jamaluddin Jamali

I know it must seem completely idiotic to you," Maddie said, hoping to coax at least a grunt from her, "hiring a date to your only sister's wedding and all."
Louise slowly nodded.
"I mean, who does such things nowadays, right? Women don't need men for anything. Well, they do need them for one thing. But that's all - and, really, debatable depending on your sexual orientation. — Jennifer Shirk

[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table ... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct. — Antonin Scalia

Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. — John Shelby Spong

While the word "republic" derives etymologically from the Latin "res publica" - which literally means "the people's thing," what a republic or a "republican form of government" is today remains debatable; but what it is not is clear: No matter its political composition, a government that does not adhere to the rule of law, is ruled by a president who dictates, courts that legislate, and a legislature that is elected by a minority, led by the few, and administered by members who fail to embody the will of the people, represent party caucuses and factious special interests, overlook executive overreach, transfer legislative powers, and maintain monarchic lengths of time in office - and all of this to the detriment of justice, the Union, and the Constitution - is not a republic or republican form of government but something else. — Anonymous

Some people claim we have a Christian heritage in America that needs restoring, but such a claim is debatable and is not well supported by the evidence. We have no biblical warrant to deify the past. Consequently, I find it difficult and possibly wasteful to try to identify just what part of our heritage was Christian in hopes that we can somehow get back to it. — Donovan L. Graham

It should probably be said that the virtues of the society of the self are entirely debatable. Orienting laws around individuals led directly to an entire tradition of human rights and the prominence of individual liberty in legal codes. That has to count as progress. But reasonable people disagree about whether we have now tipped the scales too far in the direction of individualism, away from those collective organizations: the union, the community, the state. Resolving those disagreements requires a different set of arguments - and values - than the ones we need to explain where those disagreements came from. — Steven Johnson

debatable today, as the structure could house the entire population of Athens, but could do nothing to protect their resources or withstand a long siege. And like every empire, the greatest enemy turned out to be the self. Athens ended up falling largely as a result of its own foolishness. The Greeks lost control. The empire got too big and essentially imploded upon itself. The proud and overly ambitious military leaders lost — Tom Simek

Two things are not debatable: eroticism, and comedy. If you don't think it's sexy, or funny, there's no way I can change your mind. — Gene Siskel

Dave ignored him and kept right on jogging. When he reached me, he jumped into the passenger seat Dukes of Hazzard style. "Can you drive?"

Well, that was debatable, given my close encounter with the wall but I wasn't going to get into that now. I eyed him warily. "What are you doing here?"

"No time for that. Can you put your foot on the clutch?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. I didn't like what he was implying. I may have just almost hit the wall but I wasn't a complete idiot. "I could put my foot in your crotch if you like?" I suggested.

A slow smile spread across his face and I looked away. God, that was supposed to insult him, not amuse him. Or turn me on. — Belinda Williams

If my aim is to prove I am "enough," the project goes on to infinity - because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable. — Nathaniel Branden

It is debatable which is causing us more harm - hot-headed ignorance or cold-hearted intellectualism. — Vance Havner

To pass to the deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care to debate much. — George Saintsbury

As for logical consequences, the "logic" is highly debatable. If you continually arrive late for my workshop, despite my warning that lateness is unacceptable, I may find it "logical" to lock you out of my classroom. Or perhaps it would be more "logical" to keep you locked in after class for the same number of minutes you were late. Or maybe my "logic" demands that you miss out on the snacks. As you may be starting to suspect, these are not true exercises in logic. They're really more of a free association, where we try to think of a way to make the wrongdoer suffer. We hope that the suffering will motivate the offender to do better in the future. — Joanna Faber

I even, to my own amusement if no one else's, developed the knack of cursing in iambic pentameters. — Philip Palmer

Deprive the taboo rules of their original context, and they at once are apt to appear as a set of arbitrary prohibitions, as indeed they characteristically do appear when the initial context is lost, when those background beliefs in the light of which the taboo rules had originally been understood have not only been abandoned but forgotten.
In such a situation the rules have been deprived of any status that can secure their authority, and, if they do not acquire some new status quickly, both their interpretation and their justification become debatable. When the resources of a culture are too meagre to carry through the task of reinterpretation, the task of justification becomes impossible. Hence perhaps the relatively easy, although to some contemporary observers astonishing, victory of Kamehameha II over the taboos (and the creation thereby of a vacuum in which the banalities of the New England Protestant missionaries were received all too quickly). — Alasdair MacIntyre

Try to be brief, will you, Tru?" Tse-Mallory asked his companion. "If there is one among us who is guilty of persistent loquacity," came the reply smoothly, "it is not I." "Debatable" was Tse-Mallory's simple retort, as he followed September up the steps leading out of the temple. "Not without being guilty of the crime of debating!" shouted Truzenzuzex, — Alan Dean Foster

One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem,above all other sciences,is
that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable,while those of all
other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being
overthrown by newly discovered facts. — Albert Einstein

When you don't know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious. — Jason Fried

Sonnet I
If thee must say that I am not who I am,
That I am not real or true,
Then thou must say you are not as well,
For we either walk in fairytales and dance to our dreams,
Or we die trying to capture a miracle between the ordinary moments,
We rejoice in the gratitude for our needs met,
But we pray for the staircases and open doors to our desires,
We redefine our gratitude with another day,
Another dance of praise to Thee for undoing are mistakes of unneeded wants and needs we want, but not met. — Shannon L. Alder

He was talking about hire purchase. precredit cards. A different way of getting the poor into debt, but I think he was right. It was nice when ordinary people could take a holiday in Spain, of course, but easy credit is what started the cultural rot. Tourism depends on lots of people everywhere with loads of disposable wealth, which means all kinds of changes through a place a cultivates it. The real, messy, informative past disappears to be overlaid with bad fiction, with simplified folklore, easy answers. Memory needs to remain complex, debatable. Without those qualities it is mere nostalgic sentimentality. Commodified identity. Souls bough and sold. — Michael Moorcock

Heaven knows that alcohol is the worst thing in the world, but it's debatable whether cocaine is worse than caffeine or whether it's the same thing and they just changed the name. — Merle Haggard

Although intelligence tests are usually speed tests for the sake of convenience, it is debatable whether speed has any rightful place in the basic concept of intelligence. — Isabel Briggs Myers

The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values. — Noam Chomsky

Still, he watched intently as she began her descent, ready to grab her arm should she waver. "You're hovering," she said without turning. "Hovering is my job." "That's debatable." "No, actually, it isn't," he said, flatly. "Humph." They'd reached the ground floor now and she turned to walk toward the back of the house. He grimaced as he took the last step overly hard on his bad leg. She didn't turn, but he noticed that she slowed her pace for him. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exceptions of this statement and death. — John Ralston Saul

Embedded in 'The New York Times' institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world. And with some noble exceptions, 'The Times,' by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. — Glenn Greenwald

Just why Mr. Frodo was selling his beautiful hole was even more debatable than the price. — J.R.R. Tolkien

She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I'd been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I'd sought her out that day
I had never gone to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I'd spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy:
I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can't pretend to love you, I can't do the anniversary thing
it would actually be more wring than cheating on you in the first place (I know: debatable.)
But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and
the catch-22
I craved Andie to make me feel better,
But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite.
The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed. — Gillian Flynn

His affection for his car was a fine debatable line between uncomfortable obsession and a deep love. — Rebecca Ethington

I stared at Eph, envying the fact that he already had a costume, though whether it was actually qualified as a costume was debatable. He was dressed in all black- black jeans, black knit hat, black boots, long-sleeved, black T-shirt, black thermal on top of it.
"I'm the dark night of the soul. Or a black hole. Or something like that," He'd said when I'd asked him earlier.
"You're copping out," I said.
"How is being in more than one costume copping out? I'm actually so investing in this, I am in an infinite number of costumes. It's meta and crap. — Meg Leder

You called her a cunt," I reminded him.
"He threw out a hand, his brows shooting up. "Were you not just here? She is a cunt."
This was not debatable. I didn't even know why I brought it up. — Kristen Ashley

Peck Valley would have shuddered a bit had it known the easy ethics of its mortuary artist in such debatable matters as the ownership of costly "laying-out" apparel invisible beneath the casket's lid, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy. Most distinctly Birch was lax, insensitive, and professionally undesirable; — H.P. Lovecraft

Hollow then produced Kobel's tax returns for the past three years.
When Ringling objected, Hollow said to Judge Rollins, "Your Honor, a man who files a tax return is of sound mind."
"That's debatable," said the ultraconservative judge, drawing laughter from the courtroom. — Jeffery Deaver

I suppose now I'm obliged to wish you happiness in your new life. Although happiness in the absence of indoor plumbing is a debatable concept. — Lisa Kleypas

The only thing you can justifiably claim that life owes you is an equal measure of what you have given out. And even that is debatable. — Richelle E. Goodrich

There's no question that largely vegetarian diets are as healthy as you can get. The evidence is so strong and overwhelming and produced over such a long period of time that it's no longer debatable. — Marion Nestle

Nothing is gained by debate on non-debatable subjects. — Theodore Roosevelt

Never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for the murder of the helpless. In securing any kind ofpeace, the first essential is to guarantee to every man the most elementary of rights: the right to his own life. Murder is not debatable.
-Theodore Roosevelt — R.C. Sproul

Blurbs don't work anymore!" was another. "You should make sure that the quotable lines of dialogue in your book never exceed a hundred and forty characters!" seemed at best debatable. — Scott Westerfeld

Unhappily, law is by no means confined to its own department. Nor is it merely in some indifferent and debatable views that it has left its proper sphere. It has done more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its proper end; it has destroyed its own object; it has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established, in effacing amongst Rights, that limit which was its true mission to respect; it has placed the collective force in the service of those who wish to traffic, without risk, and without scruple, in the persons, the liberty, and the property of others; it has converted plunder into a right, that it may protect it, and lawful defense into a crime, that it may punish it. — Anonymous

When you treat reprehensible and ludicrous arguments with respect you have elevated the reprehensible and made the ludicrous a bit more reasonable. Having a serious argument with a Nazi makes the horror of the Holocaust a debatable point. Don't wrestle in the mud with pigs. You get dirty and the pig likes it. — Jonah Goldberg

As long as Mary can't cook and has those awful manners - well, we're safe, nobody else would have her. I perceived that my wife's methods of housekeeping were not so entirely haphazard as I had imagined. A certain amount of reasoning underlay them. Whether it was worthwhile having a maid at the price of her not being able to cook, and having a habit of throwing dishes and remarks at one with the same disconcerting abruptness, was a debatable matter. — Agatha Christie

No one can argue with a testimony, it is not a debatable issue. It is there to be accepted or rejected. — Bruce R. McConkie

But why?"
"You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question debatable? — Ayn Rand

So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat
Over everything debatable and combatable
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life
Particularly if he has income and she is pattable. — Ogden Nash

Remember that emotion is not a debatable phenomenon. It is an authentic reflection of our subjective experience, one that is best served by attending to it. — Curt Thompson

Yeah, a lot more than he likes you," said Oh. It didn't look like Milo appreciated the joke very much.
"That's debatable," said Milo.
"Is not," said Oh.
She leaned in and put her pink cast against my cheek, kissing me quickly on the lips.
"That's incredibly unfair. If we were gay you'd be up a creek without a paddle. You wouldn't even be in the game."
"He's right, you know," I said.
"Aw. You guys are having a bromance. That's really cute. — Patrick Carman

Hunger is not debatable. — Harry Hopkins

When Philippa had first demanded his help in eluding Kate and travelling to St Mary's, he had indignantly refused. He was there now because he had discovered, to his astonishment, that she was desperate, and perfectly capable of going without him. Why she had got it into her young head she must see this man Crawford, Cheese-wame didn't know. But after pointing out bitterly that (a) he would lose his job; (b) the rogues in the Debatable would kill them, (c) that she would catch her death of cold and (d) that Kate would never speak to either of them again, he went, his belt filled with knives and her belongings as well as his own in the two saddlebags behind his powerful thighs, while Philippa rode sedately beside him on her smaller horse, green with excitement, with her father's pistol tied to her waist like a ship's log and banging against her thin knees. — Dorothy Dunnett

A free and independent press is generally considered essential for democracy, both to raise timely questions about debatable government policies and to report challenges to those policies when they fail. — W. Lance Bennett

I've inspected your profile. You are not stupid. Misguided, idealistic, naive, certainly, but not stupid. You must know how societies work. You must at least have an inkling. They work on force, power and coercion. People don't behave themselves because they're nice. That's the liberal fallacy. People behave themselves because if they don't they'll be punished. All this is known. It isn't even debatable. Civilisation after civilisation, society after society, species after species, all show the same pattern. Society is control: control is reward and punishment. Reward is being allowed to partake of the fruits of that society and, as a general but not unbreakable rule, not being punished without cause. — Anonymous

Sometimes, though only in my most unguarded moments, I can still think of Annette Winters as my first love. At fifteen, she was tall, slender, very dark: an intelligent, sly girl possessed of what I think of now, though I didn't think of then, as a kind of debatable beauty. — John Burnside

And this has given rise to a whole new class of preening, narcissistic quacks like yourself who say in the service of rich and shameless polluters that the state of the atmosphere and the water and the topsoil on which all life depends is as debatable as how many angels can dance on the fuzz of a tennis ball. — Kurt Vonnegut

the next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it. And a particular point of it is that the popular critics of Christianity are not really outside it. They are on a debatable ground, in every sense of the term. They are doubtful in their very doubts. Their criticism has taken on a curious tone; as of a random and illiterate heckling. — G.K. Chesterton

What isn't debatable is that conventional marriage is a full-blown disaster for millions of men, women, and children right now. Conventional till-death-(or infidelity, or boredom)-do-us-part marriage is a failure. Emotionally, economically, psychologically, and sexually, it just doesn't work over the long term for too many couples. — Christopher Ryan

Clemens, Seaver, Gibson, Maddux - I just don't see myself in that category. I'm flattered that maybe it's debatable at this point. — David Cone

Anderson's muckraking is one of debatable ends constantly used to justify questionable works. — Thomas Griffith

I have an MFA in writing. It is debatable if they are right for everyone, but I had a mentor who really changed my life, so it worked for me. — Rob Roberge

If form follows function, as we know it does in this Universe, then consciousness will adapt to whatever form it requires in order to function. Hopefully, it will also develop its fundamental function; what that is may be debatable within many schools of thought, but it is indisputable that evolved thinking recognizes the universality of Life. — Vanna Bonta

It's kind of debatable whether or not the advertisement model is effective. Like whether Nielsen works. — Kevin Smith