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“Sir, I have found you an argument, but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”

Permalink: Samuel Johnson

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Boswell records Johnson using it to close down an argument with a man who would not concede a point. The force is in the second clause, which declines to go on with the contest at all, and the sentence has become the standard English description of a conversation that has stopped being an exchange of reasons.

Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell

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