Top 205 Fallacy Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I think personal diplomacy has caused a lot of mischief and harm, and has impeded the progress of peace in the world. It leads to a very great fallacy - the almost pathetic belief of some Foreign Ministers - that, if they had lunch with someone and called him by his Christian name, they have changed the fundamental facts of relationship between nations.

In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust.

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.

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.

Money makes people rich; it is a fallacy to think it makes them better, or even that it makes them worse. People are what they do, and what they leave behind.

What does one have to do today to reconcile France? Distribute public money - that's what some expect, especially the radical left. They think that you help people by handing them money. But that is a fallacy because it is not me distributing the money, but rather future generations.

Many business leaders still believe that time on-task equates to productivity. Even in the industrial era of rote factory work, this was untrue. It is a misguided fallacy, and an expensive one, too. Every key facet required for business success will fail when sleep becomes short within an organisation.

But it is a fallacy, if one is examining the methods by which security can be attained, to start upon the assumption, as so many hon. Members do, that we get security by an increase of air armaments or an increase of any other form of armaments.

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.

Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds; it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.

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.

If you can pay enough people to buy your .99 ebook and review it positively, and crack one of Amazon's bestseller lists, readers are going to check it out. Especially at a low price point like .99. Customers are suckers for the fallacy that the cream rises to the top.

When science shall have effectually demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved the fallacy of the occultists and old philosophers who held (as their descendants now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of spirit, then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the old Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old religions.

Admittedly, having a bit of disposable cash in the bank can give you a sense of Buddhistic calm, and despite the fallacy involved, that's probably preferable to the bonafide adventure of robbing a bank. A better alternative, however, is to learn to be at peace even when common sense (a highly overrated virtue) would lead you to believe that someone in your situation ought to feel threatened and insecure.

It is a fallacy to believe that a Republic of any kind can be won through the shackled Free State. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The Free State is British created and serves British Imperialist interests. It is the buffer erected between British Capitalism and the Irish Republic.

I was not a person who you would find on social media traditionally, but when I was introduced to Instagram, I saw it as a way to show other medical students on their journey that you don't have to give up your life to study medicine. The stigma that you can't have a life in medical school was a fallacy, and I was the living proof of that.

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.

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.

The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy.

I have never believed in the fallacy that the federal government can buy its way out of economic troubles through needless spending. For that reason, I am proud to oppose 'stimulus' packages and endless corporate bailouts, which will do little but weaken the long-term integrity of the American economy.

The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy , taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.

One thing has not changed: to doubt the worth of minority students' achievement when they succeed is really only to present another face of the prejudice that would deny them a chance to even try. It is the same prejudice that insists all those destined for success must be cast from the same mold as those who have succeeded before them, a view that experience has already proven a fallacy.

I feel that The American Dream is this fallacy that you come to the United States and win lotto. That's a disservice to The American Dream because the American Dream is worth striving for. And it's not easy.

The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.

A man who marries a woman to educate her falls victim to the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.

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.

The supposed astronomical proofs of the theory [of relativity], as cited and claimed by Einstein, do not exist. He is a confusionist. The Einstein theory is a fallacy. The theory that ether does not exist, and that gravity is not a force but a property of space can only be described as a crazy vagary, a disgrace to our age.

Unquestionably the truth or fallacy of the theory of the survival of the soul is by far the most tremendous question that can exercise the human mind. The more you think of it, the more all other questions seem to sink into utter insignificance, for only if survival be true, can the Universe be rationalized at all.

What Western society teaches us is that if you get enough money, power, and beautiful people to have sex with, that's going to bring you happiness. That's what every commercial, every magazine, music, movie teaches us. That's a fallacy.

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.

Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower" animals with simple nervous systems arise as genetic products of natural selection, then human behavior should have a similar basis.

You're never in control. That - that is the greatest fallacy of the - you know, there's over 200 people that it requires to make a film. And there's people who are in control of how you look, what your performance is, what takes are used, what - you're only in control of how you say no.

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.

There is this fallacy of the 'cool' comedian out there. You see the guys who take themselves very seriously and think they're being very suave and sardonic. But they're just jesters like the rest of us; they're just goons like we all are. The job is to make people laugh.

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.

Obamacare is collapsing. It's dead. It's gone. There's nothing to compare anything to because we don't have health care in this country. You just look at what's happening. Aetna just pulled out. Other insurance companies are pulling out. We don't have health care. Obamacare is a fallacy. It's gone.

It's a fallacy, long rebuffed by science, that humans use only about 10% of their brainpower. But it is true about most summer movies. Pouring their wizardry into special effects and well-choreographed fights, warm-weather action films rarely challenge the viewer with grand notions or beautifully baffling imagery.

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.

Common sense is science exactly in so far as it fulfills the ideal of common sense; that is, sees facts as they are, or at any rate, without the distortion of prejudice, and reasons from them in accordance with the dictates of sound judgment. And science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

I live by fallacy. 'If I get enough nice Ikea furniture, I'll be a grown-up.' Then I catch myself. Or, 'If I get off by myself, away from the stress of modern life, I'll be OK.' Then I catch myself.

There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically -- we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first!

I think it's a total fallacy for people to say, "You couldn't make those old movies today." I think there's more ways to get a movie made today than ever in the history of the entertainment industry. It's a very exciting time to work in movies, if you're a creative person looking to make a very personal, weird vision.

It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.

There's nothing in Hollywood that's inherently detrimental to good art. I think that's a fallacy that we've created because we frame the work that way too overtly. 'This is Hollywood.' 'This isn't Hollywood.' It's like, 'No, this is actually all Hollywood.' People are just framing them differently.

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.

The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.

A science only advances with certainty, when the plan of inquiry and the object of our researches have been clearly defined; otherwise a small number of truths are loosely laid hold of, without their connexion being perceived, and numerous errors, without being enabled to detect their fallacy.

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.

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.

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!

Behind Trump's promise to 'make America great again' lie many fallacies. The most important fallacy is that America's place in the world can be restored to the one it occupied after World War II, when Europe was still recovering from vast devastation and most developing countries were still European colonies. It can't be.

Ignorance, as well as disapproval for the natural restraints placed on market excesses that capitalism and sound markets impose, cause our present leaders to reject capitalism and blame it for all the problems we face. If this fallacy is not corrected and capitalism is even further undermined, the prosperity that the free market generates will be destroyed.

...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.

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.

I think that it is a fallacy to suppose that helpful cooperation in the future will be assured by the attempted compulsion of an inflexible rule. Rather will such cooperation depend upon the fostering of firm friendships springing from an appreciation of community ideals, interests, and purposes, and such friendships are more likely to be promoted by freedom of conference than by the effort to create hard and fast engagements.

We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It's very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy - where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system. That's clearly not the case when it comes to social systems.

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.

Probably the most pervasive false belief most of us harbor is the fallacy that only some superhuman act would have the power to turn our problems around. Nothing could be further from the truth. Life is cumulative. Whatever results we're experiencing in our lives are the accumulation of a host of small decisions we've made as individuals, as a family, as a community, as a society, and as a species.

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

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.