Fallacy Quotes - Page 3

• The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man's troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.

  Martyn Lloyd-Jones

  Change, Men, Thinking

  David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1959). “Studies in the Sermon on the Mount”

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• Sophistry is the fallacy of argument.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Sophistry, Argument

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• The question we must ask ourselves as a culture is whether we want to embrace the change that must come, or resist it. Are we so attached to the dietary fallacies with which we were raised, so afraid to counter the arbitrary laws of eating taught to us in childhood by our misinformed parents, that we cannot alter the course they set us on, even if it leads to our own ruin? Does the prospect of standing apart or encounttering ridicule scare us even from saving ourselves?

  Howard Lyman

  Law, Childhood, Parent

  "Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat". Book by Howard Lyman and Glen Merzer, 1998.

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• The fact that man produces a concept "I" besides the totality of his mental and emotional experiences or perceptions does not prove that there must be any specific existence behind such a concept. We are succumbing to illusions produced by our self-created language, without reaching a better understanding of anything. Most of so-called philosophy is due to this kind of fallacy.

  Albert Einstein

  Philosophy, Men, Emotional

  Robert N. Goldman, Albert Einstein (1997). “Einstein's God: Albert Einstein's Quest as a Scientist and as a Jew to Replace a Forsaken God”, Jason Aronson Incorporated

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• Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol' "The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we're marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah." You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it's because it's not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it's speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me.

  David Foster Wallace

  Art, Stupid, Real

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• All logic texts are divided into two parts. In the first part, on deductible logic, the fallacies are explained; in the second part, on inductive logic, they are committed.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Two, Intelligence, Firsts

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• ...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Healing, Evil

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.103, Simon and Schuster

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• In the social equation, the value of a single life is nil; in the cosmic equation, it is infinite... Not only communism, but any political movement which implicitly relies on purely utilitarian ethics, must become a victim to the same fatal error. It is a fallacy as naïve as a mathematical teaser, and yet its consequences lead straight to Goya's Disasters, to the reign of the guillotine, the torture chambers of the Inquisition, or the cellars of the Lubianka.

  Arthur Koestler

  Errors, Political, Single Life

  Arthur Koestler (1952). “Arrow in the blue: an autobiography”

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• The message of "The Winner Takes It All" is straightforward: It argues that the concept of relationships ending on mutual terms is an emotional fallacy. One person is inevitably okay and the other is inevitably devastated.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Emotional, Messages, Relationships Ending

  Chuck Klosterman (2009). “Eating the Dinosaur”, p.149, Simon and Schuster

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• Zionism is the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish history

  Henry Morgenthau, Sr.

  Jewish History, Zionism

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• Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat: these two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Self, Law, Two

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.20, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Illusions as bad as mine make people aware of the fallacies of visual information and the pleasure to be derived from such fallacies.

  Vik Muniz

  People, Information, Illusion

  Vik Muniz, Charles Stainback, Mark Alice Durant (1998). “Vik Muniz: seeing is believing”

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• Metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues we have to what thinking means to those who engage in it.

  Hannah Arendt

  Mean, Thinking, Clue

  Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument.

  Eliot Spitzer

  Political, Ceilings, Debt

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• Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  War, Kissing, First Love

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• To expect reason is where the fallacy lies.

  Richard Russo

  Lying, Reason

  Richard Russo (2017). “Straight Man”, p.92, Atlantic Books

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• Until I know this sure uncertainty, I'll entertain the offered fallacy.

  William Shakespeare

  Knows, Uncertainty

  William Shakespeare (2016). “The Comedy of Errors: Third Series”, p.192, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

  Tom Robbins

  Evil, Mind, Trying

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• A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Environment, Rely, Lungs

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.132, Hamilton Books

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• One of the terrible fallacies of contemporary psychotherapy is that if people would just say how they felt, a lot of problems could be solved.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  People, Problem, Terrible

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.235, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, 'I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection.' I have dubbed this kind of fallacy 'the Argument from Personal Incredulity.' Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Intellectual, Skins

  "River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life". Book by Richard Dawkins, March 20, 2014.

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• There is a fallacy that the powerful emotion of youth mellows with time. Not true. One learns to control and suppress it. But it doesn't lessen. It simply hides and concentrates itself in more discreet places. When one accidentally stumbles into one of these abysses, the pain is spectacular.

  Nicole Krauss

  Pain, Powerful, Emotion

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.55, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It wasn't sarcasm." Graves blew out a cloud of acrid smoke. "It was pointing out a fallacy in your logic, babe." Anna's jaw actually dropped. For a moment, I wasn't sure if I should laugh or push him out of the room. Way to go, Graves.

  Lilith Saintcrow

  Sarcasm, Clouds, Laughing

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• At least half of the popular fallacies about economics come from assuming that economic activity is a zero-sum game, in which what is gained by someone is lost by someone else. But transactions would not continue unless both sides gained, whether in international trade, employment, or renting an apartment.

  Thomas Sowell

  Zero, Games, Employment

  "Random Thoughts" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. June 13, 2006.

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• Perhaps that is the real surprise of love; it exists, but one may not attribute causes and effects to it. The existence may appear to be a mere fallacy to the minds of some, and by the time they realise what hit them, they would already be down and dead.

  Faraaz Kazi

  True Love, Real, Mind

  Faraaz Kazi (2012). “Truly, Madly, Deeply!: Memoirs of a Broken Heart's First Love!”, p.35, Faraaz Kazi

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