Argumentative Fallacy Quotes

Using insult instead of argument is the sign of a small mind.

We all resort to the ad hominem from time to time: in human affairs, it is difficult to avoid it, and probably not desirable. After all, our opponents are human. The proper use of an ad hominem argument, however, still requires evidence to back it up.

There is no such thing as a convincing argument, although every man thinks he has one.

No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.

One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness-that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments. [p.111]

There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and he wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.

The very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden...A belief in invisible cats cannot be logically disproved although it does tell us a good deal about those who hold it.

Who is apt, on occasion, to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.

Reading a brief filled with ad hominem attacks is like listening to my kids fight, except that I have to wait until we're in the courtroom to tell the attacking lawyer what I think about it.