Voltaire explains how to argue with a fanatic
Have you tried to actually have a civil conversation with someone with whom you disagree about the Reid-Angle senatorial race? How’d that turn out? Was there blood?
She’s a superlative ignoramus! He’s a Marxist manipulator!
Never the twain shall meet.
Reminds one of the lament expressed by French philosopher Voltaire after a futile debate with an English Quaker over how Quakers can possibly call themselves Christians if they’ve not been baptized.
Voltaire threw up his hands in despair and declared, “I took care not to dispute anything he said, for there’s no arguing with an Enthusiast. Better not take it into one’s head to tell a lover the faults of his mistress, or a litigant the weakness of his cause — or to talk sense to a fanatic. And so I went on to other questions.”
