Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.
Sophistry
The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Genius may dazzle, eloquence may persuade, reason may convince; but to render popular cold and comfortless sophistry, unaided by these powers, is a hopeless attempt.Robert Hall: Apology for the Freedom of the Press, Sect. IV.
Subtilty in those who make profession to teach or defend truth hath passed for a virtue: a virtue, indeed, which, consisting for the most part in nothing but the fallacious and illusory use of obscure or deceitful terms, is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance.
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.
When a false argument puts on the appearance of a true one, then it is properly called a sophism or “fallacy.”Dr. Isaac Watts.
Little tricks of sophistry, by sliding in or leaving out such words as entirely change the question, should be abandoned by all fair disputants.Dr. Isaac Watts.
