A few (ok, so maybe more than a few) favorite quotes on the art of debate:
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” – Joseph Joubert
“The aim of a debate or argument is not victory, but progress.” – Joseph Joubert
“Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.” – Joseph Joubert
“Don’t take the wrong side of the argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.” – Baltasar Gracian
“In heated argument we are apt to lose sight of the truth.” – Publilius Syrus
“There is no conversation so boring than the one where everybody agrees.” – Michel de Montaigne
“I have always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.” – Abigail Adams
“To talk to each other is but a more animated and audible thinking.” – Charlotte Bronte
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.” – Thomas Paine
“It is unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong, and proving himself, wrongly, right.” – Lemony Snicket
“The most important tactic in an argument next to being right is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face.” – Stephen Jay Gould
Incurable Curiosity 