Talk:Agree to disagree

VfD
On May 10, 2005, this article was nominated for deletion. The result was keep. See Votes for deletion/Agree to disagree for a record of the discussion. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:44, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

"Agree that they disagree"
I removed the following sentence:


 * "Agreeing to disagree" is a common phrase in English which may be better described as a situation where the parties agree that they disagree.

I (respectfully) disagree with this interpretation, because I would argue that it can apply even when the parties do not "agree to disagree." Two people can both agree that their positions are incompatible, and hence "agree that they disagree," but they won't necessarily compromise by dropping the issue. Maybe a better way to put it is that the phrase means something like "agree that their disagreement is not worthy of continued conflict," but putting that in myself would obviously be original research. $$\sim$$ Lenoxus " * " 21:47, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Earlier uses
I've edited the article because I came across a Wesley reference to Whitefield having used 'agree to disagree' (Whitefield died before Wesley's first published use of it), and also found an earlier use of 'agree to differ'. I assume these changes won't be invalidated as original research, though, because I'm just citing something found in published books. Curiouswiker (talk) 03:13, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I've found two earlier instances of "agree to disagree" well before Wesley and Whitefield. See https://wjdw.nl/2019/04/12/was-john-wesley-the-first-to-put-the-phrase-agree-to-disagree-in-print/. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Willemjdewit (talk • contribs) 16:35, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

In 2012 I revised the article to reflect the information that Whitefield used the expression before Wesley, and that Wesley himself had explicitly associated the expression with Whitefield. I just did a Google Books search to see if additions of more books to the net have revealed still earlier usages. Sure enough they have, and I was congratulating myself on being the first to discover them until I checked the Talk page and saw that in April of 2019 someone beat me to it. Willemjdewit did so and provided a link on the Talk page to the information. Apparently the article itself wasn't revised to reflect that information, though, so I've gone ahead and done so. Whitefield and Wesley may have helped popularize the expression in its usual meaning, but as Willemjdewit observes, there are published usages of the words themselves well before that, by William Wycherley in 1706 and by James Anderton (pen name John Brereley) in 1608. Curiouswiker (talk) 07:46, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081011170130/http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/53/2/ to http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/53/2/

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"I'm entitled to my opinion"
The reason why Agree to disagree and I'm entitled to my opinion are separate articles is because they are separate topics. Defining the former as the latter just confuses them. There is a connection between the two topics, as is already noted in the "See also" section, but no reasons or references have been offered that would justify mixing the two subjects in the lead section. Per MOS:LEAD, the lead section is supposed to summarize the article. See also the prior discussion at Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 22:46, 21 November 2021 (UTC)