Chesterton on arguing

From GKC's Illustrated London News column, March 9, 1929: 

“People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. And it is extraordinary to notice how few people in the modern world can argue. This is why there are so many quarrels, breaking out again and again, and never coming to any natural end.”

Chesterton relished debate, and enjoyed deep and lasting friendships with a number of people diametrically opposed to his beliefs. Unsurprisingly, the difference between argument and mere quarreling is a topic he returned to over and over again.

From What's Wrong with the World, published nearly two decades before the above quotation: "If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence." From his Autobiography, published after his death in 1936, reflecting on his younger brother Cecil, who died in World War I: "I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled." And, as an aside:

“Perhaps the principal objection to a quarrel is that it interrupts an argument.”

Food for thought. Chesterton, as usual, being relevant from beyond the grave.