Sophistry Quotes

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  • Some people don't mind a little constitutional sophistry in a good cause; and for liberals, centralizing all power in the federal government is always a good cause. Since most Americans don't know or care what the Constitution says, let alone what their ancestors thought it meant, the great liberal snow job has been very successful.

  • It is Satan's constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law and gives men license to sin.

    Hate   Real   Character  
    "The Great Controversy".
  • We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third.

    Heart   Love Is   Self  
    Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”
  • Tis mighty easy o'er a glass of wine On vain refinements vainly to refine, To laugh at poverty in plenty's reign, To boast of apathy when out of pain, And in each sentence, worthy of the schools, Varnish'd with sophistry, to deal out rules Most fit for practice, but for one poor fault That into practice they can ne'er be brought.

    Pain   Wine   School  
    Charles Churchill (1855). “The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill: With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes”, p.377
  • There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.

    Men   Errors   Matter  
    Sir Walter Raleigh (1829). “The history of the world”, p.112
  • That Hegelian dialectics should provide a wonderful instrument for always being right, because they permit the interpretations of all defeats as the beginning of victory, is obvious. One of the most beautiful examples of this kind of sophistry occurred after 1933 when the German Communists for nearly two years refused to recognize that Hitler's victory had been a defeat for the German Communist Party.

    Beautiful   Party   Years  
    Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.71, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • We find sects and parties in most branches of science; and disputes which are carried on from age to age, without being brought to an issue. Sophistry has been more effectually excluded from mathematics and natural philosophy than from other sciences. In mathematics it had no place from the beginning; mathematicians having had the wisdom to define accurately the terms they use, and to lay down, as axioms, the first principles on which their reasoning is grounded. Accordingly, we find no parties among mathematicians, and hardly any disputes.

  • Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.

    Lying   Fire   Sophistry  
    Leonardo da Vinci (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Leonardo da Vinci (Illustrated)”, p.597, Delphi Classics
  • Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?

  • If a close examination of the evidences of Christianity may be expected of one class of men more than another, it would seem incumbent upon lawyers who make the law of evidence one of our peculiar studies. Our profession leads us to explore the mazes of falsehood, to detect its artifices, to pierce its thickest veils, to follow and expose its sophistries, to compare the statements of different witnesses with severity, to discover truth and separate it from error.

    Men   Errors   Law  
  • The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. The wits of these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which the dull caution of our laborious ancestors durst never attempt; they cut the knots of sophistry, which it was formerly the business of years to untie, solve difficulties by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend long processes of argument by immediate intuition.

    Cutting   Years   Long  
    Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.237
  • One of the great sophistries of our age, I think, is that merely because one has an inclination to do something, that therefore acting in accordance with that inclination is inevitable. That's contrary to our very nature as the Lord has revealed to us. We do have the power to control our behavior.

    Thinking   Age   Acting  
    Source: www.mormonnewsroom.org
  • O Reader! hast thou eer stood to see The Holly-tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceies Its glossy leaes Ordered by an Intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

    Wise   Atheist   Eye  
  • Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

    "Essay, On the Athenian Orators" as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations, p. 137, 1922.
  • It seems to me, that the only Objects of the abstract Sciences or of Demonstration is Quantity and Number, and that all Attempts to extend this more perfect Species of Knowledge beyond these Bounds are mere Sophistry and Illusion.

    David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.1066, Delphi Classics
  • It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

    Struggle   Love Is   Iron  
    George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.1166, Wordsworth Editions
  • So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, "a clash of civilisations" and "collateral damage". The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice.

    People   Justice   Damage  
    "The algebra of infinite justice" by Arundhati Roy, www.theguardian.com. September 29, 2001.
  • There is too much ideological conformity in gender studies. The true-believers fashion the theories, write the textbooks and teach the students. When journalists, policymakers, and legislators address topics such as the wage gap, gender and education, or women's health, they turn to these experts for enlightenment. For the most part, they peddle misinformation, victim politics, and sophistry. They claim that their teachings represent the academic consensus, but that is only because they have excluded all dissenters.

    "Is Modern Academic Feminism Harming Women?". Interview with Clay Routledge, www.psychologytoday.com. September 4, 2016.
  • Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold.

    Fire   Gold   Deceit  
    Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.250, GENERAL PRESS
  • It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot. Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death.

    Feet   Body   Sophistry  
    'Hawk Roosting' (1960)
  • No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye.

    Eye   Skeletons   Naked  
    Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.122, A&C Black
  • The American elite ... is almost beyond redemption. Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush -- sophistry washed down with Chardonnay.

    Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (1997). “The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories”, Regnery Pub
  • Sophistry, like poison, is at once detected and nauseated, when presented to us in a concentrated form; but a fallacy which, when stated barely in a few sentences, would not deceive a child, may deceive half the world, if diluted in a quarto volume.

    Children   Poison   Half  
    Richard Whately (1861). “Logic”, p.65
  • Religion is a thing to be lived. It is not merely sophistry.

    Surendra Varmā, Mahatma Gandhi (1970). “Metaphysical Foundation of Mahatma Gandhi's Thought”
  • The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical."

    Mean   Eye   Past  
    "The Whig Interpretation of History". Book by Herbert Butterfield, 1931.
  • After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus."

    James Boswell (1998). “Life of Johnson”, p.333, Oxford University Press, USA
  • There must be sophistry in all this; but the condition of a slave confuses all principles of morality, and, in fact, renders the practice of them impossible.

    Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.85
  • Sophistry is the fallacy of argument.

  • Truth is strong enough to overcome all human sophistries.

    "Against Timarchus". Speech by Aeschines, 84 (107), c. 346 BC.
  • Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be as armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.

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