Straw Man Quotes

While some of the critics are voicing legitimate concerns about the merits of a system of academic benchmarks, Common Core is frequently a straw man for the frustrations conservatives have with the federal government.

Every time the conservatives get in trouble, they start pounding on this ridiculous idea that the liberals want to take their microphones. They want to get Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity off the air. That is a straw man argument throw out by the conservative broadcasters who are so out of material they are going to fear-monger their listeners.

For thousands of years, human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself.

The noun phrase straw man, now used as a compound adjective as in 'straw-man device, technique or issue,' was popularized in American culture by 'The Wizard of Oz.'

[Calling you a] star is just a trick. It's like a straw man thing. They [people] set you up just to knock you over. It's bull. You avoid it, I avoid it.

During Seattle's successful campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage, our opponents would sometimes roll their eyes and snort, 'If $15 is so good, why not $50?' It was a straw man argument: Nobody was proposing a $50 minimum wage; it would have been too high, and we said so.

The tin man vs. the straw man. The candidate with a brain but without a heart against the president with a heart but without a brain. That's how many Latin Americans are viewing the race between John Kerry and George W. Bush.

The Left masks its distaste for the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality in a straw man argument that Bible believers are violent bigots. They are not. Citing the Bible doesn't make you a bigot against human beings - it makes you a bigot against sin, which is a good thing.

Refusal to answer a question by setting up a straw man to attack is a not an uncommon device of debating.

It seems the most common thing for serial interventionists to do these days is to lob the term 'isolationist' at anyone who does not agree with their latest folly, and then set up a straw man about those people not wanting to be involved in the world.

You can't make Howard Dean a straw man. He is what he appears to be. And that's the beauty of Howard Dean.