A Quote by Isaac Watts
Affect not little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument.
Related Quotes
The king to Oxford sent a troop of horse, For Tories own no argument but force; With equal care, to Cambridge books he sent, For Whigs allow no force but argument.
The great merit of Stephen Gould's account of the disastrous history of phychometrics is that he shifts the argument from a sterile contest between environmentalists and hereditarians and turns it into an argument between those who are impressed with what our biology stops us doing and those who are impressed with what it allows us to do.
Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.
If someone puts up the argument that King Louis gave the Romagna to Pope Alexander, and the kingdom of Naples to Spain, in order to avoid a war, I would answer as I did before: that you should never let things get out of hand in order to avoid war. You don't avoid such a war, you merely postpone it, to your own disadvantage.
Personally I do not resort to force - not even the force of law - to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example - of fashion.
My 'awakened dreams' are about shifts. Thought shifts, reality shifts, gender shifts: one person metamorphoses into another in a world where people fly through the air, heal from mortal wounds. I am playing with my Self, I am playing with the world's soul, I am the dialogue between my Self, and el espirítu del mundo. I change myself, I change the world.
A good argument diluted to avoid criticism is not nearly as good as the undiluted argument, because we best arrive at truth through a process of honest and vigorous debate. Arguments should not sneak around in disguise, as if dissent were somehow sinister... For it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.
If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'
There is a difference between being a political force, or a political apparent force or a potential force, and between a real discourse or a real argument.
The mind is so tricky. It will say, "No one cares. Is it true? Well, someone does. Let's see: So-and-so doesn't care. Well, maybe they do. Well, there is someone who doesn't care." It just shifts and shifts and shifts, so it can keep all of its concepts intact.
People didn't just wear wedding dresses in the past. They also wore plain cotton shifts beneath them. As pretty as the dresses might be, and as lovely as they might look on display, if a museum doesn't hang the shifts beside them or acknowledge that the shifts existed, that exhibit's incomplete.
I don't like watchingpeople get shot so I would be a little skittish about that - squeamish, but I must say, I don't think the argument that this is going to offend Muslims is a legitimate argument.
The terminology of philosophical art is coercive: arguments are powerful and best when they are knockdown, arguments force you to a conclusion, if you believe the premisses you have to or must believe the conclusion, some arguments do not carry much punch, and so forth. A philosophical argument is an attempt to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to beleive it or not. A successful philosophical argument, a strong argument, forces someone to a belief.
The power of mass intention may ultimately be the force that shifts the tide toward repair and renewal of the planet.
I feel very fortunate that while I had a little bit of personal panic or maybe a little internal struggle as a teenager, really coming to terms with the fact that I was gay, and also knowing I was going to have to tell my family. And, how was that going to affect things? And would it affect things? And ultimately, it did not.
I don't think I've ever tried to make something happen that I've absolutely had to force. You know how they say: if you can't avoid it, enjoy it. For me, it's the other way around: if I can't enjoy it, I avoid it.
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