#debate

I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field. ↗

— Clifford Geertz

#argument #atmosphere #bad #bad thing #debate

But, we have had the debate in our country now for a number of years as to whether or not free trade agreements are good for economic growth and economic opportunity in creating jobs and lifting people out of poverty. ↗

— Donald Evans

#country #creating #debate #economic #economic growth

I don't really feel like I have to have a debate with my husband over issues. ↗

— Laura Bush

#feel #husband #i #issues #like

I know it sounds trite but I wanted to make a difference. Political debates with my father had been fraught because he was uncompromising and explosive but if he taught me one thing it was to air my views. ↗

— Vince Cable

#because #been #debates #difference #explosive

Healthy disagreement, debate, leading to compromise has always been the American way. ↗

— Donald L. Carcieri

#american #american way #been #compromise #debate

But I do think its necessary to have debates. ↗

— Geraldine Ferraro

#i #i do #necessary #think

Don't change your mind just because people are offended; change your mind if you're wrong. ↗

— Criss Jami

#argument #challenge #changing #changing-your-mind #controversial

Don't bother to argue anything on the Internet. And I mean, ANYTHING.... The most innocuous, innocent, harmless, basic topics will be misconstrued by people trying to deconstruct things down to the sub-atomic level and entirely miss the point.... Seriously. Keep peeling the onion and you get no onion. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#arguing #argument #communication #debate #discourse

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #debate #ethics #existence #existentialism

In a sad twist of fate, the bill to reauthorize the Patriot Act was debated on the floor of the House of Representatives the same day that terrorists struck again. ↗

— Jim Sensenbrenner

#again #bill #day #debated #fate