Fallacy Quotes - Page 7

• We console ourselves with the comfortable fallacy that a single museum piece will do, ignoring the clear dictum of history that a species must be saved in many places if it is to be saved at all.

  Aldo Leopold

  Museums, Rivers, Environmental

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.559, Library of America

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• The key fallacy of so called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

  Thomas Sowell

  Gun, Keys, Law

  "The great gun control fallacy" by Thomas Sowell, www.theguardian.com. December 18, 2012.

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• A dangerous fallacy is to repudiate freedom in favor of an unknown future. What else but our own sturdy reliance on freedom can explain the unexampled record this country has made? In a period scarcely twice my own lifetime it has risen from nothingness to become the world's greatest power. It has become the ark of the covenant of freedom.

  Bernard Baruch

  Country, Future, Ark

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• Economics is primarily useful, both to the student and to the
  political leader, as a prophylactic against popular fallacies.

  Henry Calvert Simons

  Leader, Political, Students

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• When you find the right components in your life, the right people, that gel with you, then you feel as though you're invincible. It may be a fallacy, but you at least feel as though you can take all that life has to dish out.

  Sylvester Stallone

  People, May, Dishes

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• A lot of actors aren't particularly good directors. And they're not particularly good with other actors. That's kind of a fallacy.

  Peter Mullan

  Directors, Actors, Kind

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• Once infected, the individual [infected with a god virus] cannot detect major contradictions in his beliefs and behavior. Belief systems become self-evident to him, and no amount of logical discourse will move him from his belief. If a Mormon and Catholic were to debate the merits of their respective religions, neither could see his own inconsistencies and logical fallacies, but would see the other's quite clearly.

  Darrel Ray

  Moving, Self, Catholic

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• The slight variations in extracting procedure cause many of the amygdalin (Vitamin B-17, Laetrile) molecules to change to a form unknown to nature(:) isomers...There are ...purveyors who label their 'iso-amygdalin' products 'amygdalin' contrary to all of the recognized specs...For commercial or political purposes, they certainly cannot justify such a fallacy...This scientific heresy and commercial fraud...(is) tremendously reducing the effectiveness of amygdalin therapy. ...To mislabel iso-amygdalin as amygdalin is scientifically, medically, and morally indefensible.

  Ernst T. Krebs

  Dark, Effectiveness, Political

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• Democracy is talking itself to death. The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them. There is too much foolishness, too much lost motion. I have stopped the talk and the nonsense. I am a man of action. Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.

  Benito Mussolini

  Beautiful, Men, Talking

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• Gandhi rejects the Adam Smith notion of human nature as motivated by self-interest and brute needs and returns us to our spiritual dimension with its impulses for nonviolence, justice and equality. He exposes the fallacy of the claim that everyone can be rich and successful provided they work hard. He points to the millions who work themselves to the bone and still remain hungry.

  Nelson Mandela

  Spiritual, Hard Work, Successful

  "The Sacred Warrior" by Nelson Mandela, content.time.com. December 31, 1999.

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• The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Arrows, Understanding, Together

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.860, Random House

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• The fallacy in the progressive critique is the egalitarian dogma that no one should get more than what liberals deem is a 'fair' reward, nor should there be any risk to anyone to fail.

  Robert Agostinelli

  Egalitarianism, Risk, Rewards

  "DECKER: 5 Questions with Robert Agostinelli". Interview with Brett M. Decker, www.washingtontimes.com. November 14, 2012.

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• One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true

  John Fowles

  Order, Opposites, Rose

  John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

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• To pretend you don't feel a certain strangeness after living in England for 40 years is a fallacy.

  Trevor McDonald

  Years, England, Certain

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• The divergent series are the invention of the devil, and it is a shame to base on them any demonstration whatsoever. By using them, one may draw any conclusion he pleases and that is why these series have produced so many fallacies and so many paradoxes.

  Niels Henrik Abel

  Science, Devil, Divergent

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• The biggest public fallacy is that the market is always right. The market is nearly always wrong. I can assure you of that.

  Jim Rogers

  Business, Finance, Always Wrong

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• I think the fallacy is to think that Women's Liberation meant that men and women would become interchangeable. That has not happened, and most men and women would not want it to happen.

  Christina Hoff Sommers

  Men, Thinking, Want

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• In learning and argumentation, the quality brain is similar to a facility of maximum security. What passes the logic test, free of fallacy and pretense, then must pass the test of biblical accuracy in order to proceed as an adopted, reliable truth.

  Criss Jami

  Biblical, Order, Brain

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.34, Criss Jami

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• There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted...and get it without toil, without sweat, without tears. Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Song, Pain, Believe

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Starship Troopers”, p.76, Penguin

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• A common fallacy: to imagine a measure will be easy because we have private motives for desiring it.

  George Eliot

  Thinking, Common, Imagine

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• We cannot but think there is something like a fallacy in Mr. Buckle's theory that the advance of mankind is necessarily in the direction of science, and not in that of morals.

  James Russell Lowell

  Science, Thinking, Moral

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among My Books: First [-second] series”, p.116

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• If I am ever obscure in my expressions, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand, though they might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason for suspecting a fallacy.

  Charles Kingsley

  Expression, Appreciate, Style

  Charles Kingsley (1877). “Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life”, p.56

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• It's a critical fallacy of our times ... that a writer should 'grow,' 'change,' or 'develop.' This fallacy causes us to expect from children or radishes: 'grow,' or there's something wrong with you. But writers are not radishes. If you look at what most writers actually do, it resembles a theme with variations more than it does the popular notion of growth.

  Margaret Atwood

  Children, Growth, Doe

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• And there's the fallacy of existence: the idea that one could be happy forever and age with a given situation or series of accomplishments.

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Ideas, Accomplishment

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.62, Anchor

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• I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.

  Charles Darwin

  Principles, Body, Facts

  Letter to J. Fiske, 8 December (1784)

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