To argue in the face of our fear brings on the _magical “yes,”_ the simple affirmation of our being _Argument_ springs out of our authority. It escapes from us as our thought and feeling, as our sounds, our music, our rhythms. When we give ourselves _permission_, the argument bursts from our lungs, out of our throats, out of words formed and caressed by our lips, out of words born of our hearts. When we give ourselves _permission_, we rediscover our will to win — may I say it? — we become born-again gladiators.

Every self is an argument trying to prove its identity

Arguing to hear one's own wonderful voice: I know people who use argument merely to hear their own voices. They are noisemakers. These people seem perfectly secure, but they are enchanted with their words, enthralled with their own wisdom, and they are, to be sure, as boring as popcorn without salt. They have, during the course of their lives, made so much noise and filled the air with so much authoritative banality that they have had no time to form an original thought, nor have they given themselves the opportunity to hear and learn anything from listening to anyone else.

What's all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.

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

People rid the room of argument until they have no one left — except people who agree with them. It is understandable. But I like a good argument.

I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly.

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

...[W]e must not let it enter our minds that there may be no validity in argument. On the contrary we should recognize that we ourselves are still intellectual invalids; but that we must brace ourselves and do our best to become healthy... No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than that of developing a dislike for argument.

I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.

as a young man I thought the ideal philosophical argument was one with the following property: someone who understood its premises and did not accept its conclusion would die.

The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth.

Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them.

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.