Equivocation Quotes

“Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Sort of' is such a harmless thing to say... sort of. It's just a filler. Sort of... it doesn't really mean anything. But after certain things, sort of means everything. Like... after "I love you"... or "You're going to live"... or "It's a boy!”
― Demetri Martin

“The many meanings of 'evolution' are frequently exploited by Darwinists to distract their critics. Eugenie Scott recommends: 'Define evolution as an issue of the history of the planet: as the way we try to understand change through time. The present is different from the past. Evolution happened, there is no debate within science as to whether it happened, and so on... I have used this approach at the college level.'
Of course, no college student—indeed, no grade-school dropout— doubts that 'the present is different from the past.' Once Scott gets them nodding in agreement, she gradually introduces them to 'The Big Idea' that all species—including monkeys and humans—are related through descent from a common ancestor... This tactic is called 'equivocation'—changing the meaning of a term in the middle of an argument.”
― Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

“It's not stealing, it's retrieving.”
― Mora Early, Twisted Arrangement

“Well, let's see. There's—of course in the great history of America there have been rulings that there's never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So, you know, going through the history of America, there would be others. But, um.”
― Sarah Palin

“waffle: (n.) breakfast of politicians.”
― Sol Luckman, The Angel's Dictionary

“There is no direct relationship between social and artistic ‘planning’. Planning as the exclusion of free, unregulated competition in the field of economics and planning as the strictly disciplined execution of an artistic plan, elaborated to the last detail, can at the very most be brought into a metaphorical relationship with one another; in themselves they represent two absolutely different principles, and it is perfectly conceivable that in a planned economy and society a formally individualistic art, revelling in variety and improvisation, might well come to the fore. There is scarcely any greater danger for the sociological interpretation of cultural structures than such equivocations and none to which it is easier to fall victim. For there is nothing easier than to construct striking connections between the various styles in art and the social patterns predominating at any particular time, which are based on nothing but metaphor, and there is nothing more tempting than to make a show of such daring analogies. But they are just as fateful traps for truth as the illusions enumerated by Bacon and they might well be put on his list of warnings as idola aequivocationis.”
― Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages