Fallacy Quotes - Page 8

• Discrepancy between theory and practice, which in sound physical and mechanical science is a delusion, has a real existence in the minds of men; and that fallacy, through rejected by their judgments, continues to exert and influence over their acts.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Real, Men, Discrepancies Between

  William John Macquorn Rankine (1872). “A Manual of Applied Mechanics”, p.4

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• The more important point, however, is not about what the money does. It's about what has to be done to get the money. The effect of the money might be (democratically) benign. But what is done to secure that money is not necessarily benign. To miss this point is to betray the Robin Hood fallacy: the fact that the loot was distributed justly doesn't excuse the means taken to secure it.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Taken, Mean, Missing

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• Since the time of Plato and Aristotle philosophers have had an interest in taking note of common fallacies in reasoning.

  Randal Marlin

  Plato, Philosopher, Common

  Randal Marlin (2013). “Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion - Second Edition”, p.110, Broadview Press

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• I do not expect that the mere fact that I was once an evangelical apologist and now see things differently should itself count as evidence that I must be right. That would be the genetic fallacy. It would be just as erroneous to think that John Rankin must be right in having embraced evangelical Christianity since he had once been an agnostic Unitarian and repudiated it for the Christian faith.

  Robert M. Price

  Christian, Thinking, Atheism

  Opening Statement on Mars Hill Forum at Unitarian Church, Monclair, New Jersey, www.mars-hill-forum.com. January 11, 1997.

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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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• The fallacy is that politicians don't really do much about social issues. They just demonize their opponents as elitists and reap the benefit. It's a stupid way to do politics. Economic issues can more often be addressed concretely, and it would seem logical for people to vote their interests in this area.

  Timothy Noah

  Stupid, Often Is, Issues

  Source: www.slate.com

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• Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd suppose.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Character, Mean, Greatness

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• The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Art, America, Issues

  "Our Mission Statement" by William F. Buckley Jr., www.nationalreview.com. November 19, 1955.

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• In this deeply nuanced portrait of an American family, Bret Anthony Johnston fearlessly explores the truth behind a mythic happy ending. In Remember Me Like This, Johnston presents an incisive dismantling of an all-too-comforting fallacy: that in being found we are no longer lost.

  Alice Sebold

  Comforting, Portraits, Remember

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• I'm always identifying some fallacy in my own life. I'm sort of making fun of myself by exploring and unpacking just why I'm sort of automatically thrown to be a certain way.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Fun, Unpacking, Way

  Interview with Jeff Sartain, strangehorizons.com. October 16, 2006.

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• I've never met anyone who has said, "My goal is to make America mediocre." That's a kind of hard-right conservative fallacy.

  Aaron Sorkin

  America, Goal, Conservative

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I hate to force anything. A lot of people say that comedy is twenty percent truth, and eighty percent fallacy. I believe that you have to have lived through something to write about it.

  Tone Bell

  Hate, Believe, Writing

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• "Isn't it fun getting older?" is really a terrible fallacy. That's like saying I prefer driving an old car with a flat tire.

  Katharine Hepburn

  Fun, Car, Getting Older

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I call the notion that we are nothing but killer apes the Beethoven fallacy. Beethoven was disorganized and messy, and yet his music is the epitome of order.

  Frans de Waal

  Order, Killers, Apes

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• A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an afterlife would also be a proof of the existence of a deity. This is far from being the case. If, as I hold, there is no good reason to believe that a god either created or presides over this world, there is equally no good reason to believe that a god created or presides over the next world, on the unlikely supposition that such a thing exists.

  A.J. Ayer

  Believe, Afterlife, World

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• The words 'theory' and 'practice' are of Greek origin; they carry our thoughts back to the ancient philosophers by whom they were contrived, and by whom they were also contrasted and placed in opposition, as denoting two mutually conflicting and mutually inconsistent ideas. ... [this fallacy] based on a double system of natural laws retarded for centuries the development of physical science, notably mechanics.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Law, Practice, Ideas

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• The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside

  George Orwell

  Believe, Government

  George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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• War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.

  Ernest Hemingway

  War, Men, Play

  Ernest Hemingway, Séan A. Hemingway (2003). “Hemingway on war”, Scribner Book Company

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• It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me, that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to man.

  John Steinbeck

  Sadness, Men, Years

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.330, Penguin

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• It is a fallacy of the old schools to divide man into parcels, elements, thoughts, emotions, intuitions, etc.  All human faculties consist of an interconnected whole.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Old School, Men, Intuition

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