Valid Argument Quotes & Sayings

An argument can be logically valid, but unsound in that it contains a false premise and, therefore, leads to a false conclusion (e.g., Scientists are smart; smart people do not make mistakes; therefore, scientists do not make mistakes). — Sam Harris

We need to reflect with great seriousness about why many young people don't feel like getting married ... For fear of failure, many do not want to even think about it ... Many people believe the change that has taken place in recent decades was set in motion by the emancipation of women. But this argument is not valid, it is an insult, a form of misogyny. — Pope Francis

I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial. — David Attenborough

Let us begin with some of the earliest discoveries and correct hypotheses. Anaximander thought that the earth floats freely, and is not supported on anything. Aristotle,2 who often rejected the best hypotheses of his time, objected to the theory of Anaximander, that the earth, being at the centre, remained immovable because there was no reason for moving in one direction rather than another. If this were valid, he said, a man placed at the centre of a circle with food at various points of the circumference would starve to death for lack of reason to choose one portion of food rather than another. This argument reappears in scholastic philosophy, not in connection with astronomy, but with free will. It reappears in the form of 'Buridan's ass', which was unable to choose between two bundles of hay placed at equal distances to right and left, and therefore died of hunger. — Anonymous

Nonsemes and mathemes stand next to each other in detached and mutually irrelevant jumbles. They lack the crucial valency that ties sentence to sentence in a truth-directed argument or formula to formula in a valid proof, and they can accumulate forever without getting to the point of saying or revealing what they mean. — Roger Scruton

Pure concepts of the understanding. So the Humean problem is completely solved, though in a way that would have surprised its inventor. The solution secures an a priori origin for the pure concepts of the understanding, and for the universal laws of nature it secures a status as valid laws of the understanding; but it does this in such a way as to limit the use of these concepts to experience only, and it grounds them in a relation between the understanding and experience that is the complete reverse of anything that Hume envisaged - instead of the concepts being derived from experience, that experience is derived from them. My line of argument yields the following result: All synthetic a priori principles are simply principles of possible experience; they can never be applied to things in themselves, but only to appearances as objects of experience. Hence pure mathematics as well as pure natural science can never bear on anything except appearances — Anonymous

If one is going to change the definition of marriage to be, quote, 'same sex,' then there is absolutely no valid argument constitutionally or rhetorically you can make against multiple people getting married. These are radical social changes. — Gary Bauer

Power positions do not yield to arguments, however rationally and morally valid, but only to superior power. — Hans Morgenthau

All roses are flowers. Some flowers fade quickly. Therefore some roses fade quickly. A large majority of college students endorse this syllogism as valid. In fact the argument is flawed, because it is possible that there are no roses among the flowers that fade quickly. — Daniel Kahneman

1. God is (by definition) a being than which no greater being can be thought.
2. Greatness includes greatness of virtue.
3. Therefore, God is a being than which no being could be more virtuous.
4. But virtue involves overcoming pains and dangers.
5. Indeed, a being can only be properly said to be virtuous if it can suffer pain or be destroyed.
6. A God that can suffer pain or is destructible is not one than which no greater being can be thought.
7.For you can think of a greater being, that is, one that is nonsuffering and indestructible.
8. Therefore, God does not exist. — Douglas N. Walton

You can't cure ignorance based solely on the basis of a valid argument... — Gary A. Nilsen

In the case of food, if the argument is valid that we need some kind of genetic modification to help feed the world's growing population, then I believe that we cannot simply dismiss this branch of genetic technology. However, if, as suggested by its critics, this argument is merely a front for motives that are primarily commercial - such as producing food that will simply have a longer lasting shelf life, that can be more easily exported from one side of the world to the other, that is more attractive in appearance and more convenient in consumption, or creating grains and cereals engineered not to produce their own seeds so that farmers are forced to depend entirely upon the biotech companies for seeds - then clearly such practices must be seriously questioned. Many — Dalai Lama XIV

Swearing doesn't make your argument valid; it just tells the other person you have lost your class and control. — Shannon L. Alder

Going back to the missed-disco opportunities or forgone pleasures argument, this would be entirely valid if we were discussing the reasons I've never had a dog. Whereas it's never even occurred to me to have a child, I would love to have a dog but am put off by the burden of responsibility involved. And while not having a child is a source of pleasure, not having a dog is a source of constant torment and endless anxiety for my wife and me. We keep wishing that we could arrange our lives in such a way that it was possible to have a dog, but we keep coming up empty-handed, empty-pawed. — Meghan Daum

In third grade, I had to an oral report on the state of Oregon. I brought up Big Foot sightings, and I remember there was an argument about whether or not Big Foot was valid history. Ever since then I've been thinking about how subjective history is. — Sufjan Stevens

It is clear that several countries, in the Balkans for example, need to be considered countries of safe origin. But others like, in my opinion, Eritrea, undoubtedly need to be considered a country of origin with a valid claim to asylum. And with a third group of states, like Nigeria for example, each individual case needs to be evaluated. Then there are also very controversial cases like Afghanistan. In any case, united European action is needed. This argument for Europeanization may sound utopian, but there is no alternative. — Paolo Gentiloni

At the time, infatuated with Nietzsche (and half asleep), Leonard didn't want to get into this argument, the truth of which wasn't that all religions were equally valid but that they were equally nonsensical. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Consumption is the death of capital, and the only valid arguments in favor of consumption are arguments in favor of death itself. — Kenneth E. Boulding

The only logical meaning of necessity seems to be derived from implication. A proposition is more or less necessary according as the class of propositions for which it is a premiss is greater or smaller.* In this sense the propositions of logic have the greatest necessity, and those of geometry have a high degree of necessity. But this sense of necessity yields no valid argument from our inability to imagine holes in space to the conclusion that there cannot really be any space at all except in our imaginations. — Bertrand Russell

I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance. — Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

So the professor takes the student's point seriously, and responds with a concise but adequate argument in defence of the disputed equation. The professor tries hard to show no sign of being irritated by criticism from so lowly a source. Most of the questions from the floor will have the form of criticisms which, if valid, would diminish or destroy the professor's life's work. But bringing vigorous and diverse criticism to bear on accepted truths is one of the very purposes of the seminar. Everyone takes it for granted that the truth is not obvious, and that the obvious need not be true; that ideas are to be accepted or rejected according to their content and not their origin; that the greatest minds can easily make mistakes; and that the most trivial-seeming objection may be the key to a great new discovery. — David Deutsch