"Le mot dialogue est à la mode ; je le regrette, n’ayant moi-même aucune des vertus d’un bon dialoguiste, qui sont de ne pas écouter ce qu’on lui dit, ou de le prendre dans un sens qui le rende facile à réfuter."
Étienne Gilson, "Le dialogue difficile," in Les tribulations de Sophie: essais d’art et de philosophie (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1967), 103. I was put on to this by the description to the recent translation of this book by James G. Colbery: "the virtues of a skilled dialoguer ... are not to listen to what is being said and to take it in a sense that makes it easy to refute." To this I would add the virtue of treating the process as a form of maneuver.