Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.

Whately’s quip treats argument as something shaped by appetite and circumstance as much as by logic. At a dinner table, the hungry person is distracted, impatient, and motivated by getting food rather than by careful reasoning; the satiated person can afford calm, time, and rhetorical finesse. The line is a humorous warning about “unfair” conditions for debate: whoever is least burdened by immediate needs tends to sound more persuasive, regardless of who is right. More broadly, it suggests that intellectual contests are often decided by advantages external to the merits—comfort, leisure, and self-control—so choosing the setting matters if one wants a genuinely rational exchange.