Sophism Quotes

“Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement.”
― Larken Rose

“Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility—based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men—is in danger, whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“But the art of sophistry, which the Greeks cultivated, is a fantastic power, which makes false opinions like true by means of words. For it produces rhetoric in order to persuasion, and disputation for wrangling. These arts, therefore, if not conjoined with philosophy, will be injurious to every one.”
― Clement of Alexandria, The Works of Clement of Alexandria: The Stromata, On the Salvation of the Rich Man, Pædagogus and More

“But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if
you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches.
That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans
still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved
they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to
alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly
press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been
accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies
dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily “true”
of “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional”
or “ruthless”. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.
Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is
strong, or stark, or courageous — that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort
of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own
ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am
suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father
Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is
awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted
so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient
the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the
stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the
stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don't let him ask what he means by “real”.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“On the Roots of the World’s Great Evils

I was born to vanquish three extreme evils:
tyranny, sophism, and hypocrisy;
so now I realize with how much harmony
Themis taught me Power, Intellect, and Love.
These are true and supreme principles
of the great philosophy revealed,
the remedy against the triple lie,
under which you, oh world, quiver weeping.
Famines, wars, plagues, envy, deceit,
injustice, lust, sloth, and disdain,
all depend on these three great evils
which in blind self love have their deserving son,
the root and instigator of ignorance.
Therefore, I come to pluck out ignorance.”
― Tommaso Campanella, Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella

“ὡς ἀγωνίζῃ λόγοις καὶ φροντίδων φροντίσιν,
καὶ τῶν ἐμῶν σοφισμάτων ἐραστὴς γεγένησαι,
καὶ τὸ φρονεῖν τιμᾷς μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ χρήματα."

"As you struggle in contests of words and in the thoughts of the mind,
and have become a lover of my clever arguments,
and you honor thinking more than money.”
― Aristophanes, Clouds