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

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.

You have to listen to adversaries and keep looking for that point beyond which it's against their interests to keep on disagreeing or fighting.

If you're saying something that people don't want to hear or accept, a significant proportion of them will reply with hostility. Not because they know the facts, or because they have researched it themselves, but because they're so psychologically involved in believing good news that they will oppose it with a reflex.

There are many causes why a people politically ignorant cannot be roused to action. Perfect political ignorance must be accompanied by indifference to the general interests of society, and thus one of the most powerful motives which can act on the human mind is totally destroyed.

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don't want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

When the initial effort of political and business leaders to influence public opinion on an issue is to threaten rather than to engage and persuade, they further arouse public opposition rather than win support.

A big part of the problem that we face today is that our children have been taught at schools that every idea is right, that no one should criticize others' positions, no matter how odious.

Conflict grows out of ignorance and suspicion.