Ad Hominem Quotes

Using insult instead of argument is the sign of a small mind.

If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

We all resort to the ad hominem from time to time: in human affairs, it is difficult to avoid it, and probably not desirable. After all, our opponents are human. The proper use of an ad hominem argument, however, still requires evidence to back it up.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

You never win an argument until they attack your person.

No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.

... there were few forces willing to confront the neoconservative juggernaut and its drive towards war with Iraq. They had mastered the art of marketing their policy prescriptions and were aggressive and intimidating in debate. Their strategy, as I discovered, was to make an opening statement, interrupt the person making a different argument, and then filibuster to the end of a five-minute television segment. That domination of the available time, coupled with aggressively stated talking points and ad hominem attacks on the credibility and intelligence of their interlocutors, was designed to leave viewers with the impression these neocon experts were the only ones who knew what they were talking about. After a while, many of the genuine experts on the region, people who had spent their careers living and working in the Arab world, simply refused to subject themselves to such demeaning behavior and retired to the sidelines.

If you're trying to get something done, there will always be people who don't want to see you get something done, or who have a stake in the status quo. And if they approach that through ad hominem criticism of you, you've got to have enough confidence and thickness of skin to be able to endure.

An attack is always a smear when it is directed against you.

Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. The implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides ad hominem responses reach far.

If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.

Those who call me an opportunist are following the old rule: If you can't attack the data, attack the person.

Anybody who is against that obviously must be a communist.

President Obama has been attacking relentlessly. In 2008 he said that if you're out of fresh ideas you use stale tactics against your opponent - you try and make your opponent unacceptable and that's what he is trying to do.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton, every time you disagree with them it doesn't matter which subject it is, you're a bigot or you're a racist.

The world I want to live in is a world where everybody is a bit more uncertain about their arguments and is a bit more open to other people's arguments. I think that we can engage ideas without ad hominem attacks.

There's something about the American people: They have such an innate sense of fairness that the red light goes on and the bells go off the second you approach that line. Any kind of personal attack is verboten. You shouldn't do it; it's not worth it.

I get really negative comments all the time, but the comments that really bother me are the ones that question my character.

I learned early that you'd better know what you're talking about. You'd better realize that certain issues are going to be so hot - no matter what reason, what logic you apply to it - you're going to be met with an opposition just because their viewpoint is different, and there's no way they're going to accept your reasoning. Furthermore, they're going to attack you because you will be portrayed as not being credible: "You're an actor. What do you know?"

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

I never took that stuff personally when people said I was too young, too inexperienced. I get politics. I get attack ads. But they said 'mobbed up family.' That we were criminals. That kills me.

What do you know about music, you're not a lawyer?

You often see in Washington those who disagree you described as stupid or evil. It's one of the most unfortunate trends of modern political discourse. Portraying opponents as too dumb to know the truth but smart enough and wanting people to suffer.

[Ed Miliband]'s elevated personal abuse into a sort of strategy

Quit voting me down before you even think about what I'm saying.