A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.
Miguel De UnamunoRead
At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right
Interpretation
What this quote means
Silence can be deceptive, and true persuasion requires reason and morality, not just power.
This quote emphasizes the importance of honesty and the role of reason in effective communication. While brute force or silence might lead to temporary victories, true persuasion and convincing others require a foundation of reason and ethical consideration, which the speaker suggests is often lacking in forceful arguments.
Themes
SilencePersuasionReasonTruthPower
In practice
Example use cases
During a public debate about ethics, you might cite this quote to emphasize the importance of reasoning over mere force.
More from Miguel De Unamuno
All quotes →Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons.
Miguel De UnamunoRead
Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.
Miguel De UnamunoRead
Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.
Miguel De UnamunoRead
If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it, let us fight against destiny, even without hope of victory.
Miguel De UnamunoRead
Spiritual Love is born of sorrow. . . . For men love one another with spiritual love only when they have suffered the same sorrow together, when through long days they have ploughed the stony ground buried beneath the common yoke of a common grief. It is then that they know one another and feel one another and feel with one another in their common anguish, and so they pity one another and love one another.
Miguel De UnamunoRead
Similar quotes
In America, mixed-race identity tends to invite both curiosity and suspicion, largely because few have found a way to interrogate it without centering whiteness as the scale by which to evaluate blackness.
Jenna WorthamRead
Small wonder our national spirit is husk empty. We have more information but less knowledge. More communication but less community. More goods but less goodwill. More of virtually everything save that which the human spirit requires. So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness
Randall RobinsonRead
Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.
Huey NewtonRead
The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to engage with the other Africa.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Isaiah was so attuned to God, because of the great crisis he had just endured, that the call of God penetrated his soul. The majority of us cannot hear anything but ourselves. And we cannot hear anything God says. But to be brought to the place where we can hear the call of God is to be profoundly changed.
Oswald ChambersRead