No matter how you cut it, this real debate on personal accounts is about the legitimacy of Social Security; it’s not about the solvency of Social Security.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.

The tragedy of America is that it entered all the wars with a consensus in favor of them, but within a defined period, the legitimacy of the war became a major domestic issue, with some people arguing that withdrawal was the only legitimate objective.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced – the just demands of peace and security will be met – or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.

Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.

If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

You can only have one aim per debate.

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

When I was young, many people worked for a company with a pension plan that covered them for as long as they lived. If they didn’t have a pension plan, they could count on Social Security and Medicare.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Social Security’s not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you’ve got to put all of it on the table.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.

The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat.

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.

Theology is unnecessary.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.

Force does not constitute right… obedience is due only to legitimate powers.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

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

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.

I think if you make a good movie, people walk away arguing.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information – the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

Religion is not going to come up with any new arguments.

We will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it – not by turning it over to Wall Street.

There are major efforts being made to dismantle Social Security, the public schools, the post office – anything that benefits the population has to be dismantled. Efforts against the U.S. Postal Service are particularly surreal.

The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.