149 Debate Quotes

Following is our list of debate quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about healthy debate.

Famous Debate Quotes

Debate rather than dictate. — Naval Ravikant

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it. — Joseph Joubert

A good debate is not a war. It’s not even a tug-of-war… it’s more like a dance that hasn’t been choreographed. — Adam Grant

Debate is healthy and no one in this chamber - starting with me - has a monopoly on being right. — Ted Kulongoski

Do not debate! is one of my inventions. — Deng Xiaoping

Don’t debate people in the media when you can debate them in the marketplace. — Naval Ravikant

We need to teach our children how to debate the major life issues. Debate strengthens their beliefs and enables them to defend themselves against ideologies that are going to come their way. — Jim Rohn

Debate and divergence of views can only enrich our history and culture. — Ibrahim Babangida

Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude. — Leo Tolstoy

We can disagree and still like each other. Let's not conflate disagreement with disdain or hate. Debate with friends is essential for progress. — Lex Fridman

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument an exchange of ignorance. — Robert Quillen

I will only debate with my equals. All others I teach. — John Henrik Clarke

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. — Socrates

Be a student, not a follower. Take interest in what someone says, then debate it, ponder it, and consider it from all angles. — Jim Rohn

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate. — Hubert Humphrey

Short Debate Quotes

• Let me light my lamp", says the star, "And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness — Rabindranath Tagore
• Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. — Barack Obama
• The most important event I covered was the Panama Canal debate, which dragged on for months. — Jessica Savitch
• Other countries care for their mentally ill. Making them debate on TV is just cruel. — Andy Borowitz
• Donald Trump is probably the most successful debater in this country since Lincoln-Douglas. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
• The electorate is starved for honest debate and for the good governance that follows from it. — Bret Weinstein
• In my downtime, for fun, I engage in philosophical internet debates. Yeah, I'm that guy. — Scott Clifton
• I participated on debating teams and in student government, and served as senior class president. — Paul D. Boyer
• I only want to debate people who are more powerful than I am. — Tucker Carlson
• True experts display intellectual curiosity. Fake experts try to shut down debate. — David O. Sacks

Speech And Debate Quotes

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence. — Newton Lee

I believe that the freedom of speech should be protected, but so should a family's right to privacy as they grieve their loss. There is a time and a place for vigorous debate on the War on Terror, but during a family's last goodbye is not it. — Dave Reichert

In academia, left-liberalism is so entrenched its advocates' debating skills have gone rusty. When you've been talking to yourself for decades and imposing speech codes on everyone else, your ability to argue coherently - let alone entertainingly - inevitably wanes. — Andrew Sullivan

The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship. — Joichi Ito

For now, decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. — Barack Obama

Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open and that...may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. — William J. Brennan

I've been doing these conventions for 20 years, and we used to at least have debates about issues. Nothing is happening basically at this convention, other than speeches. — Susan Estrich

The Senate used to be a place of great debate and accomplishment. Now it is run like a dictatorship shutting out the voices of millions of Americans. — John Cornyn

The idea that speaking at all on the topic, demanding public space in which to have that debate, is itself an act of complicity with violence, and violence against Israelis, understood as synonymous with Jews, and so violence against Jews, clearly stops the speech with an unspeakable allegation. — Judith Butler

I am broadly concerned about the slow death of free speech, but particularly in universities and also with regards to the climate change debate. — Judith Curry

Healthy Debate Quotes

I have founded Khudi, in Pakistan, a youth movement which tries to counter extremist ideology through healthy discussion and debate. — Maajid Nawaz

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

The national debate on health-care reform wildly misses the mark, with Democrats and Republicans alike arguing about who's going to pay rather than about what would actually make people healthy. — T. Colin Campbell

Political differences will always generate a healthy debate, but over time the dialogue has become more hateful and at times violent. — Mark Udall

Healthy disagreement, debate, leading to compromise has always been the American way. — Donald L. Carcieri

Political debate is political debate and that's fine. That's healthy. — Rachel Notley

[Brad Furman] is incredibly collaborative, man. He's so respectful of talent, he has so much admiration for talent. He nurtures you, he lets you give input. Of course we'll debate if we disagree, that's just a healthy atmosphere to air your differences. — John Leguizamo

If you want to right-size executive power relative to the other branches of government, the best way to do that is to have a healthy Congress in which the two parties are debating, disagreeing, but also occasionally working together to pass legislation. — Barack Obama

One of the things we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy. Because there are some trade-offs involved. I welcome this debate, and I think it's healthy for our democracy. — Barack Obama

Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy. — Mahatma Gandhi

Policy Debate Quotes

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure... It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. — Barack Obama

We must shift the energy policy debate in America with an increased focus on alternative and renewable fuels and Congress must pass meaningful alternative fuels and incentive programs to help move the U.S. away from dependence on foreign oil. — Rick Renzi

By the beginning of the 20th century, the debate about monetary policy and the nation's financial system had been going on for over a century. — Jerome Powell

Honest differences of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy making among free men. — Herbert Hoover

By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars. — Barry Goldwater

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

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

We have a policy at Greenpeace that we no longer debate people who don't accept the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change. — Ben Stewart

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy. — Joseph Stiglitz

Any debate among politicians about monetary policy is counterproductive. — Gerhard Schroder

Importance Of Debate Quotes

It is extremely important that individuals in the state of California do not own assault weapons. I mean that is just so crystal clear, there is no debate, no discussion. — Leland Yee

Much as I would have liked to respond factually and truthfully to each and every piece of misinformation spread by the Brexit campaign, it was important that I stayed out of the domestic political debate. It was David Cameron's task to win the UK referendum, not ours. — Jean-Claude Juncker

We should not use special budget procedures to jam through legislation to drill in the Arctic Refuge. This topic is too important to the public to address it in such a back-door manner. We should be having a full, open discussion of the issue during an energy debate. — Russ Feingold

Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms. — Susan Sontag

Immigration is everyone’s business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate. — Geoffrey Blainey

Regarding the debate about faith and works: It's like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most important. — C. S. Lewis

The debate we won't be having is whether or not the debt ceiling should be raised. We will not have a situation where people will hold the American economy hostage in order to achieve a specific agenda - at least not until 2013. So we think that is incredibly important as a matter of economic good. — Jay Carney

The person and society are yoked, like mind and body. Arguing which is more important is like debating whether oxygen or hydrogen is the more essential property of water. — Marilyn Ferguson

In the long run, the replacement of the precise and disciplined language of science by the misleading language of litigation and advocacy may be one of the more important sources of damage to society incurred in the current debate over global warming. — Richard Lindzen

I felt it was vital to stress the importance of national security in this debate and the need for a clear path to our exit from the European Union. I hope I have achieved both these objectives. — Liam Fox

Presidential Debate Quotes

One of the most surreal moments in this election was after the third debate, when I heard a talking head say, Al Gore won on substance, on the issues. But you have to give the victory to Bush because he seems presidential. — Bradley Whitford

Margaret Thatcher once said, "If you want something talked about, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman." — Carly Fiorina

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. — Gerald R. Ford

I debated in high school! If you told things that weren't true or just made things out of whole cloth, you were penalized. It's too bad they don't apply the same standards to presidential candidates as they do to high school students. — Mark Hamill

I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women. — Mitt Romney

In a presidential campaign, you can't lie. You can't hide what you are and what you want. You can't hide what kind of President you'll be. You can't keep on talking about nothing indefinitely and committing to nothing, you can't keep running away from debate, masking the challenges. — Nicolas Sarkozy

The threshold by the Commission on Presidential Debates. In the words of the League of Women Voters, they are a fraud being perpetrated on the American public. — Jill Stein

A little tough talk in the midst of a campaign or as part of a presidential debate cannot obscure a record of 30 years of being on the wrong side of defense issues. — Dick Cheney

I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing. — James L. Buckley

I would say it's more important who the treasury secretary is than who the vice president is. If you want to have a debate here, I'd like a debate between potential treasury secretaries than the vice presidential debate. — Warren Buffett

Democratic Debate Quotes

The great issues facing us today are not Republican issues or Democratic issues. The political parties can debate the means, but both parties must embrace the end objective, which is to make America great again. — Lee Iacocca

Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged? Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership? — Michael Foot

Al Jazeera aired a new tape of Osama bin Laden. It was the usual stuff, he called Bush evil, the Great Satan, called him a war monger. Basically, the same thing you heard at last night's Democratic debate. — Jay Leno

There is danger that totalitarian governments, not subject to vigorous popular debate, will underestimate the will and unity of democratic societies where vital interests are concerned. — John F. Kennedy

The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies. — Alexis de Tocqueville

The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Now a great debate has been born. The thesis is Democratic Socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism. The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It is now up to the Republicans to pick it up and fight along these lines. — Dick Morris

Let me announce this to the American people tonight one of the best things about this debate, as a Democrat from Massachusetts, I have proposed eliminating, getting rid of the alternative minimum tax. — Richard Neal

Let there be no mistake, Sen Sanders, his campaign and the vigorous debate that we've had about how to raise incomes, how to reduce inequality, increase upward mobility, has been very good for the Democratic Party and for America. — Hillary Clinton

One needs to know what the hierarchy of values are from which one takes inspiration, and in a democratic society this is the subject of continuous democratic debate. — Rocco Buttiglione

Argument Debate Quotes

For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate. — Margaret Heffernan

That's what we're missing. We're missing argument. We're missing debate. We're missing colloquy. We're missing all sorts of things. Instead, we're accepting. — Studs Terkel

Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. — Thomas Jefferson

Political debate with liberals is basically impossible in America today because liberals are calling names while conservatives are trying to make arguments. — Ann Coulter

The daughter of debate That still discord doth sow. — Elizabeth I

I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job. — Margaret Thatcher

Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one's own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people's, preserve dignity. — Doug Stanhope

When every one of your arguments is characterized an attempt to bring back slavery or resegregate lunch counters, it's a little hard to have any sort of productive debate. — Ann Coulter

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand. — Colin Powell

In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country. — Henry Fielding

Debate Topics Quotes

Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today, ethics, moral. — Hugo Chavez

Besides Germany, the only countries that don't have speed limits are places like Nepal, where road conditions are so bad that a limit would be beside the point. In other words, it's a little crazy that this is even a topic for debate in Germany. — Sigmar Gabriel

Open debate and full discourse on the topic of torture is a double-edged sword. — Charles D. Ellison

When you exist in the centre of a debate, as a topic, a hypothesis - otherised and stigmatised - you become the prop in a proposition. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

I like Macron a lot and I very much welcome him - particularly the fact that he made Europe one of the main topics of the election debate. — Jean-Claude Juncker

I read quite a few complaints last night about Lester Holt’s choice of debate topics. Liberals wanted to know why climate change didn’t come up. Conservatives thought there should have been a question about abortion. — Kevin Drum

A number of individuals tried to make my homosexuality a topic of debate. I admittedly found that rather upsetting. — Jens Spahn

Traditionally poetry is written in lines. But the prose poem is the kind of poem that isn't written in lines. It is lyrical prose that uses the tricks of poetry, such as dense imagery. This is a big topic of debate in poetry land. There's no perfect definition. — Campbell McGrath

Culture, what you believe, what you value, how you live matters. Now, as fundamental as these principles are, they may become topics of democratic debates from time to time, so it is today with the enduring institution of marriage. Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman. — Mitt Romney

People Writing About Debate

Name	Quotes	Likes
Naval Ravikant quotes on money, happiness and life	583	1
Jim Rohn quotes on success, change and health	802	20336
Joseph Joubert quotes on life, love and education	294	1646
Adam Grant quotes on leadership, rethinking and learning	92	220
Ted Kulongoski	10	151
Deng Xiaoping quotes on economic reform, cat	50	1267

More Debate Quotes

Once a ruler becomes religious, it becomes impossible for you to debate with him. Once someone rules in the name of religion, your lives become hell. — Muammar al-Gaddafi

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed. — Nelson Mandela

Too often character assassination has replaced debate in principle here in Washington. Destroy someone's reputation, and you don't have to talk about what he stands for. — Ronald Reagan

A real leader uses every issue, no matter how serious and sensitive, to ensure that at the end of the debate we should emerge stronger and more united than ever before. — Nelson Mandela

Never do I argue with a man with a desire to hear him say what is wrong, or to expose him and win victory over him. Whenever I face an opponent in debate I silently pray - O Lord, help him so that truth may flow from his heart and on his tongue, and so that if truth is on my side, he may follow me; and if truth be on his side, I may follow him. — Al-Shafi‘i

My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision. — Barbara Jordan

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

I only debate with serious political youth formations. Not a group of the racist Helen Zille's garden boys. — Julius Malema

If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today. — Francis Schaeffer

The tension between "yes" and "no," between "I can" and "I cannot," makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self. — Anatole Broyard

I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. — Ronald Reagan

The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us. — Brennan Manning

The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process. — Walter Cronkite

I just walked past two random guys casually debating how much money MrBeast makes and they didn't notice me. — MrBeast

Maybe It's not the biggest blockbuster film, but there will be some people that will see it, that will be debating it, that will be questioning their own sense of spirituality. If the film resonates, then I have succeeded in what I set out to do. — Eriq La Salle

There isn’t much debate on the downsides of consumption of animal protein. Study after study has demonstrated that heavily animal-based diets are associated with high cardiovascular mortality and cancer risk. — David Sinclair

The many pro-surveillance advocates I have debated since Snowden blew the whistle have been quick to echo Eric Schmidt’s view that privacy is for people who have something to hide. But none of them would willingly give me the passwords to their email accounts, or allow video cameras in their homes. — Glenn Greenwald

I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide. — Elena Kagan

Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick- Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. — Chris Hedges

Imams must ridicule Caliphate fantasies. Exchange programs between Muslim-only schools and non-Muslim-majority schools should be initiated. Community-based debates around these themes must no longer be shut down from fear of offense. — Maajid Nawaz

After the war, he became a big proponent of the argument that chemical warfare or gas warfare was actually a more humane form of warfare than shrapnel and bombs, because he saw what all those shrapnel and bombs did to all the boys who climbed out of the trenches and tried to cross no man's land, with German machine guns and artillery on the other side, he said I'll take the gas any day. I'm not making the case for gas warfare, but the idea that getting killed by gas is more horrible than getting ripped apart by shrapnel and bullets is not one I buy. And when I see the Obama administration putting pictures of people killed by gas up on the internet, I say let's put pictures of the people who got killed by shrapnel up there, and lets have a debate about which pictures look worse. It won't even be an interesting debate, getting killed by shrapnel, in my opinion, is a lot more gruesome and a lot worse. — John Mearsheimer

The debate around the ageing population should, in my view, focus much more on how we grow the active, working population. — Nicola Sturgeon

Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good. — Charles Colson

By now, a younger generation of women participate in extremely lively debates in which questions of gender, sexuality and representation on screens and across media are approached from perspectives that had not yet been articulated in the 1970s. — Laura Mulvey

Social Security is an insurance policy. It's a terrible investment vehicle. Social Security has some great benefits. But it was never meant to be a savings plan. So we need to have a national debate. Should this 12.5 percent that we're contributing all go into a Social Security pool, or should half go into a mandatory savings plan? — Larry Fink

I care not to debate which came first, Islamism or anti-Muslim bigotry; suffice to say that both feed into each other symbiotically. — Maajid Nawaz

There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go. — Rainn Wilson

It is perfectly acceptable in a free and liberal society to criticize, debate, mock, and reject any ideology. — Gad Saad

It’s almost hard to imagine anything more undemocratic than the view that political officials should not debate American wars in public, but only express concerns ‘privately with the administration.’ That’s just a small sliver of Johnson’s radicalism: replacing Feingold in the Senate with Ron Johnson would be a civil liberties travesty analogous to the economic travesty from, say, replacing Bernie Sanders with Lloyd Blankfein. — Glenn Greenwald

Especially after a loss, when there wasn’t a whole lot else to say. No discussion, no debate, no lame attempt to convince me he needed the morning off. You good? I’m good. See you in the morning. — Tim Grover

Fox [News] is far and away the extreme example. They'll have a known holocaust denier debating a holocaust survivor. — Craig Rosebraugh

I used to go on chat rooms on AOL, back when those things existed, and argue with believers in evolution and argued with them that it was against God's law to believe in evolution. It was something I believed really personally. — James David Vance

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