Fallacious reasoning Quotes

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

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.

Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

He's suffering from Politicians' Logic. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it.

That's not right. That's not even wrong.

I never said that all Democrats were saloon keepers. What I said was that all saloon keepers are Democrats.

In philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking that we are philosophizing well, while we are only departing the farther from the truth; from which it must be inferred that they who have learned the least of all that has been hitherto distinguished by the name of philosophy are the most fitted for the apprehension of truth.

The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.

Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.

Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.

It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.

Some people throw a bit of their personality after their bad arguments, as if that might straighten their paths and turn them into right and good arguments-just as a man in a bowling alley, after he has let go of the ball, still tries to direct it with gestures.

The character of false wit is that of appearing to depend only upon reason.

There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.

Global warming isn't real because I was cold today! Also great news: world hunger is over because I just ate.

There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.

An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat.

It's remarkable the logic we'll build around a misapprehension.

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

This shuffling trick of misstating the question, and setting up a man of straw to make a pompous demonstration of knocking him down, is the measure of the capacity of [Congressman] Edward Black and of the majority of the House [of Representatives].

Sophistry, like poison, is at once detected and nauseated, when presented to us in a concentrated form; but a fallacy which, when stated barely in a few sentences, would not deceive a child, may deceive half the world, if diluted in a quarto volume.

A Falsehood is, in one sense, a dead thing; but too often it moves about, galvanized by self-will, and pushes the living out of their seats.