Best Quotes from Mastering Logical Fallacies by Michael Withey with Page Numbers

But the character of the person making an argument doesn’t affect the truth of the argument, or the validity of the inference.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for a comeback: if the opponent has to resort to personal attacks, it should be clear that he’s got nothing to say against the argument itself.

The forms of ad hominem argument we’ve discussed are sometimes called ad personam (against the person), to distinguish them from ad hominem attacks directed at the commitments of the speaker.

The argument is either true or false regardless of who its proponent is.

It doesn’t matter if some other odious person shares my beliefs: that in itself doesn’t necessarily stop them from being true.

Just because the father smokes, this doesn’t mean that he can’t have an unbiased view that smoking is bad.

One simply has to point out that the opponent’s charge is irrelevant: what’s at issue here is not my character, still less that of my friends; all that matters is the argument at hand.

The fallacy of Affirming the Consequent is far less useful, but just as common, so it has its own Latin name: modus morons (the foolish way).

You need to be able to disambiguate the argument’s terms, in order to show that the argument deploys them indiscriminately in different senses.

The development of logic was motivated, in part, by the need to develop a language immune to this sort of ambiguity.

Facts are facts, regardless of how one feels about them; just because a fact makes you angry, that doesn’t stop it from being true.

We can’t help but defer to authority in every stage and aspect of our lives.

If everybody believes a certain something, it must be true. But this principle is false.

The weight of celebrity is very significant; why else would advertisers seek celebrities to endorse their products?

Logic is a powerful tool; its power, however, has its limits.

People are fallible, be they individuals or groups.

Emotions are simply more forceful than logic; thus, they often triumph.

When you brush your teeth every morning, you don’t need to justify this by appealing to an expert.

Your opponent’s anger does not contribute to the truth of the argument.

Even if this authority does have the relevant expertise, you can still raise doubts.

The facts of the matter may be frightening, disgusting, enraging: but they are still the facts, regardless of how one feels.

Faith is not universal. Faith is not of one kind, but many; moreover, many people lack faith altogether.

A proponent’s appeal to faith only works for other people who share that faith.

To make this comeback really effective, however, you have to be in command of the facts.

The principle remains the same: play to the tune of your audience’s fears to make one group look like their enemy and to make yourself look like their allies.

Even assuming that there is a God, it can be tricky to determine His will.

Your opponent may claim that God demands that such and such be done, but nobody else has reason to believe this.

The fact that one difficult thing has been achieved doesn’t mean that a different difficult thing may also be achieved.

We frequently need that tug on our heartstrings to goad us into action.

Don’t be scared about dreaming big: people can, and do, achieve great things.

The underlying logic seemed to be: "You are the ordinary, normal Americans; they are the ‘other,’ the minority; you should ignore them, because they are abnormal."

Just because a majority of people prefer Justin Bieber to Bach, it doesn’t mean the former is in any way superior to the latter.

But this dichotomy is obviously false: jam is ‘unnatural,’ death cap mushrooms are ‘natural,’ but that doesn’t mean that death cap mushrooms are better than jam on toast.

The distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’ (or ‘artificial’) in Western philosophy starts with the Sophists (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), some of whom used this distinction to denigrate the conventional in favor of the natural.

A healthy society needs conformists, but it equally needs people who go against the grain and follow their own path.

Just because there is no positive evidence for something, that is not, by itself, a reason to disbelieve it.

We should believe something, because the majority of our ancestors believed it. But, as with the Argumentum ad Populum, what our ancestors believed wasn’t necessarily right.

An argument whose premises assume the truth of its conclusion is hopeless, as they assume what they set out to prove.

You have to show that the properties of the whole can’t simply be reduced to those of its parts.

A word is equivocal when it has two or more distinct and unrelated meanings.

Analogies are extremely useful, not only in politics, but in science and philosophy as well.

You need to show that the cases are in fact dissimilar.

We cannot readily assume that anything about the uncontested case holds of the contested case.

An argument from analogy tries to establish something about an unknown or contested case from something about a known or uncontested case.

Generalizations do have their place: if I’m in the savannah, and see two of my friends being gobbled up by lions, I should probably conclude that lions are to be avoided.

A dilemma occurs when two exclusive and exhaustive answers are presented as the only possible answers to a problem.

Your job is to remind him that reality isn’t always as neat as his model.

It's important to grasp the distinction between contradictory and contrary properties.

Arguments or commands require justification; the person uttering either must provide a reason why we should do or accept what he says.

The world isn’t run by magic.

The world has no obligation to conform to our moral sensibilities, however high-minded they may be.

Just because something ought to be the case, it doesn’t mean that it is the case, or even that it can be the case.

It may be better, then, to assure your opponent that, even if nature has these limitations, this doesn’t mean that we can’t improve our lot.

You can make things better without making them perfect.

Your opponent criticizes you for not making a situation perfect; however, your aim was not to make things perfect, but only to improve things as much as possible.

It’s hard to argue that homosexuality is unnatural, if animals also engage in it.

The only secure comeback here is to marshal the empirical data against your opponent.

Facts are not rendered false just because someone evil also believes in them.

This argument simply falls outside the realm of rational discourse, and therefore is not worth debating.

You need to point out that your aim was never to make things perfect, only to improve things a bit.

The name slippery slope illustrates the logic of this fallacy well: once you’re at the top of a slippery slope, it’s very hard not to slide down, all the way to the bottom.

The first step might change people’s attitudes sufficiently that they will more easily accept the next steps.

If you find that it cannot apply to certain circumstances, then you disagree with the law; else, you need to refine the law.

You have to call your opponent out for misrepresenting your position, and remind him what your position actually is.

Sinking more money into an unprofitable venture is simply irrational.

The only relevant consideration is whether these additional resources would have a realistic prospect of return.

Past losses are therefore irrelevant to the decision at hand.

If a claim is a substantive one, it could be true, but it also could be false.

By contrast, the pseudoscientist’s assertions aren’t like that: he can’t tell you, even in principle, what sort of thing would make him retract his statement.

Words are useful, because they denote things that aren’t them—this is when a word is used.