Debates Quotes

I don’t think it should be a surprise when we’re talking about energy and trying to have more home-grown energy, be less reliant on foreign oil when you look at our health care that we’re trying to get more affordable health care, that these are going to create major debates in this country and be somewhat polarizing.

Presidential primary debates are an important part of our political process. But the media has wrested complete control from the parties and candidates over everything, including the number, the format, the qualifications, and the moderators. And they’ve become a circus.

The first thing I learned is that campaigns are about money. I had this romantic idea that campaigns were about law and debates and so forth, which is just not true. It’s about money.

When Amazon emerged, people had these debates about whether people would put their credit cards online.

I have many debates now with friends on the changes, and the continuing confusion over bringing up your children, instilling values, letting them make the right choices.

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.

The government takes the opposition day debates incredibly seriously.

There’s no way that a third party wins without being in the presidential debates. I think the vast majority of Americans are Libertarian; they just don’t know it.

Such an emphasis on the immanence of God as Creator in, with, and under the natural processes of the world unveiled by the sciences is certainly in accord with all that the sciences have revealed since those debates of the nineteenth century.

With increasing fervor since the 1980s, sustainability has been the watchword of scientists, environmental activists, and indeed all those concerned about the complex, fragile systems on the sphere we inhabit. It has shaped debates about business, design, and our lifestyles.

Conflicting views and contrasting ideas are the essence of all great debates throughout history, from the Greeks to the Oxford Union Debating Society. Today, we turn to television for the creative clash of ideas on matters that touch our lives.

Politicians have an arrogance that I just do not understand. I’ve seen more constructive debates in high school.

To be sure, debates will linger about whether Medicare is too large or too small. Debates remain about the allocation of Medicare dollars. But December 8, 2003, demonstrated that there is no debate about this most fundamental fact: Medicare must survive.

I wish I could give you a lot of advice, based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don’t have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.

We will not put a lid on opinions. On the contrary, it is more important than ever that political debates are open and free, even on the most difficult issues. Especially on the most difficult issues. The task is to encourage controversial debates in a form that strengthens democracy.

No state, as a matter of public policy, should turn back the clock on progress by, in effect, legalizing and relitigating the same types of discriminatory laws and debates that took America centuries to overcome.

I want to create the largest archive of great God debates in existence: a Web site that becomes a great resource for both Christians and atheists.

Debates go on to this day about what caused the Great Depression. Economics is not very good at explaining swings in economic activity.

There is nothing wrong with intellectual differences flowing from freedom of thought as long as such differences remain confined to intellectual debates.

When I make a contribution in debates and in our public life, the House wants to hear what I say. It goes quiet – it wants to know what my opinion is.

The government’s intention is to function, to have debates in Parliament, and to work in the interest of the people.

While it’s true that the vice presidential slot isn’t the most important thing on people’s minds in a presidential election, these debates frequently matter.

During the debates for mayor, I was continually pressed on my position on the policing procedure known as ‘stop and frisk’ – which is actually in law enforcement known as ‘stop, question and frisk’ – and why I believed that, if used properly, it could reduce crime without infringing on personal liberties and human rights.

Before the Internet, we were in a different sort of dark age. We had to wait to hear news on TV at night or in print the next day. We had to go to record stores to find new music. Cocktail party debates couldn’t be settled on the spot.

Acceptance speeches can make or break presidential candidacies. It was Al Gore‘s 2000 acceptance speech that relaunched his candidacy and nearly saved him. John Kerry‘s speech and overall ineffective convention nearly sank him in 2004 (though he was almost saved by the debates).

I’m working as hard as I can. Yesterday, I had five different debates. I don’t get a half an hour a day to talk to my wife. I don’t know how much harder I can work.

When I went up to Glasgow University in 1967, student life was dominated by 13-hour debates on Fridays, when one of the student political clubs would form the ‘government’ for the day and attempt to push through a piece of legislation, which the other clubs either supported or opposed.

Politicians today are not highly regarded… there seem to be people young and old and in the middle saying that they have never heard such wretched debates.

I like to hear conversations that are debates.

I was surprised how relevant the Moses story was to contemporary American debates – from our ongoing debate about values, to our role as champions of freedom, to our place as a country that welcome immigrants.

If I can get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states and be allowed into the debates, I’d not only run, I’d win.

But I do think its necessary to have debates.

Medicare debates in Congress should result in better Medicare benefits for all our nation‘s seniors. We’re not asking for special treatment for rural America, just a fair deal.

Open all the debates that you want, but I think that the players that I select, and in whom I have total confidence, deserve a minimum amount of respect.

In the district of Hizan, through the influence of Shaikh Abdurrahman Tagi, known as Seyda, so many students, teachers, and scholars emerged, I was sure all Kurdistan took pride in them and their scholarly debates and wide knowledge and Sufi way. These were the people who would conquer the face of the earth!

Society is indeed better off when we share knowledge with one another and have open debates about the issues in the public arena, with the hands and motives of the players identified.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

We encounter very healthy boardroom debates and pretty diverse views, so we have always had the benefit of diversity of opinion and expression before we take some important calls.

You well know, sir, that when the Constitution was submitted to the People of the respective States for their adoption or rejection, it awakened the warmest debates of the several State conventions.

My mother was an English teacher and she imbibed the habit of reading, and encouraged me to participate in debates and the like.

A lot of discussions and debates happen in our party. Isn’t it good to have a democratically run party rather than a dynastic one? So obviously, discussions do happen, and they are for the good.

Economists want their discipline to be a science, and they have nailed down a few precepts, but many of their debates are still clouded by ideology.

I think it’s one of the challenges of modern politics, which is, how do you communicate who the candidate is, and what they really believe, in the short time period you have? And for me, the best opportunity was the debates, and I think I was in real trouble before the debates, and I think the debates helped me a lot.

TV and radio debates seem inflamed, with all that shouting, but real disagreement is always avoided; they conceal their lack of content.

Most of the debates I’ve participated in have been on Christian college campuses or on secular campuses; so, largely before a student audience.

I talk about race a lot. It’s been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it’s true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don’t want to see.

I’m very happy at CNBC. It’s the passion, it’s the movement – there’s a lot of moving parts. And spontaneous TV and spontaneous debates… I don’t know that there’s anyone that enjoys their job more than I do.

While we’re having all these debates about how the book is being destroyed by the Kindle, we have to remember that narrative will not be affected at all because it’s part of our makeup as a creature on this planet.

Debates require a lot of hard work and preparation. If you try to wing it, it shows.

My political career goes back to the ’60s and those were times of vigorous debates.

The presidential and vice-presidential debates are those rare moments when people come together, but to even call them debates is a stretch because they’re played by such negotiated rules, and they’re so over-rehearsed.

Dialogue means debates and everyone‘s point of view.

The populations of Central America are very, very small indeed, so that while no one was denying and this was one of the great debates we used to have, whose fault was it that there were communists were able to do so well down there, well, that wasn’t the point.

It’s interesting when you read the debates in parliaments between MPs about whether they should give women a vote. It’s a lot of fear; it is fear of change. It’s fear if women get to vote, family structures will break down. Women will stop having children. Women won‘t vote for war.

Debates are boring.

Ah, to be a conservative climate change denier. While real scientists must do all the research and engage in heated debates about just how bad things are going to be, the deniers can rest easy in the bliss of willful ignorance.

Polemical debates happen all the time in France.

But the need for conflict to expose prejudice and unclear reasoning, which is deeply embedded in my philosophy of science, has its origin in these debates.

Despite heated political debates on the future of our health care system, there is bipartisan agreement that health IT can be a powerful tool to transform and modernize the delivery of health care in our country. Health IT is about helping patients and their loved ones.

What passes for political realism may make for lively academic debates. But it often functions, ironically, as a tool of social control, rendering us passive with an analysis that overwhelms and paralyzes us.

If there was one fact that sent me hurtling off to write ‘Politics Lost,’ it was when I learned that John Kerry had focus-grouped Abu Ghraib. We knew about the Justice Department memo in June of 2004, and Kerry didn’t raise that in any one of his three debates with George Bush.

I am a small party worker. I tried to perform in Parliament. Maximum attendance, maximum number of questions asked and maximum participation in debates.

I am waiting for the day when the German Bundestag debates the violation of human rights in Saudi Arabia.

The Sophists’ paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

Mexico isn’t a country of routine debates among presidential candidates.

And so many of the kinds of labels you get stuck with don’t really tell the story; Progressive, Art Rock, Noise Music, Downtown – it ends up being a struggle to stay out of debates that other people are having around you.

If we don’t have a responsive democracy, all the debates about charter schools, and fracking, and high-stakes testing, and the militarization of police forces – all of which are issues I care about – they aren’t real debates.

When the presidential debates are on, I’ll watch that like it’s the Super Bowl. I actually thoroughly enjoy that. I always have.

For 25 years, I was an assistant professor teaching pediatrics, neurology, pathophysiology, and ethics at my alma mater, Eastern Virginia Medical School. It’s been great training for my legislative work – we get in some debates in the classroom that would rival the General Assembly!

People whose views are swung when you get into these ridiculous debates – I think they’re all nonsense. You’ve got to have a fundamental belief, you’ve got to believe in what you believe in.

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.

Trump has torn off America’s Band–Aid. The stories we are covering are about fundamental American values. We are having debates about democracy versus autocracy, the rule of law, equality and diversity.

One one hand, it’s important to hear out the other side and try to reason with them using facts. The problem arises when we can’t even agree on what the facts are. I’ve found myself walking away from debates when the person I’m talking to just won’t acknowledge long-established facts.

I find it unnecessary, useless and frankly a bit unnecessary to get into all sorts of debates over President Obama‘s religion or the authenticity of his birth. I know for some people that it is an obsession. It is not with me.

I was a flamboyant girl who participated in debates and all.

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.

It’s too hard to present an opinion on something that’s not true to who you are. It’s much easier to base opinions and debates off of fact and your true heart on things. To me that just comes quite naturally, and it’s also about being open to what the debate is about and hearing the other side.

I’m moderating one of the presidential primary debates right after I’ve had a baby. I’m sitting in a dirty closet on the floor behind the auditorium where this debate is taking place between Obama, Hillary Clinton, and I’m pumping breast milk… twenty minutes before I’m going on.

The idea of MPs texting and emailing through debates makes my gorge rise, as it does when a minicab driver makes phone calls at the wheel. I’m not paying you to keep in touch with your mates!

I always have these debates with my friends, I was like ‘can you imagine dropping LeBron in ’75?’ and I was like ‘bro he’d win 15 championships in a row.’

In general, I found that the more that debates can be about facts and data, the more likely government is to make sound decisions that benefit innovators and the American people.

It’s been interesting seeing how vulnerable Obama is: not the secure president I thought he was or the strong leader that many people hoped he would be. He’s a conciliator. But I’ve been listening to the Republican primary debates, and they’re a bunch of lunatics. Just crazy.

Just as I wouldn’t expect a gynecologist to have a debate with somebody who believes in the Stork-theory of reproduction, I won’t do debates with Young Earth creationists.

Because I have moderated two general election debates – in 2004 and 2008 – I know better than to carp from the sidelines. I am confident in my accomplishment of having had Queen Latifah portray me on ‘Saturday Night Live‘ both years.

My wife and I often have debates about who studied in a better school and when I list KVM alumni, she kind of loses the argument.

To pull off successful attacks in debates, you have to execute with nuance and subtlety. It has to be artful.

Imams must ridicule Caliphate fantasies. Exchange programmes 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 offence.

One of the inevitable aspects of debates about euthanasia is the reluctance on the part of advocates to confront the essence of what they propose.

At these big set-piece events like the leaders‘ debates, that exterior of calm and serenity is nothing compared to what’s going on inside most of the time.

I like to think I’ve changed the centre of gravity on lots of national debates.

My awakening to the fight for women’s votes came when I was 13, and the BBC screened a drama called ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ about the suffragettes, with the great Sian Phillips as Emmeline Pankhurst. It made a huge impression on me – not just the history, but because of the debates it triggered at home.

In Washington, there is a way to have disagreements and debates, which is so healthy, but a way to be friends at the end of the day, which I believe is the essence of America.

For as long as I can remember, we’ve been having debates about the foreign policy disasters and seemingly unsolvable problems around the world. Dinner conversations are replayed over generations – nothing seems to get better, and in some aspects, it seems dramatically worse, and that is especially true for women.

From lying about climate change, to undermining programs that make up our social safety net, to opposing laws that reduce gun violence, to fighting marriage equality, the Kochs’ tentacles infiltrate all parts of America’s public debates.

One of the great debates about the Internet is whether it is making people more or less free.