An appeal to pity (also called argumentum ad misericordiam or the Galileo argument) is a fallacy in which someone tries to win support for an argument or idea by exploiting his or her opponent's feelings of pity or guilt. It is a specific kind of appeal to emotion.
Famous quotes containing the words appeal to, appeal and/or pity:
“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions.”
—Flannery OConnor (19251964)
“Logic is like the swordthose who appeal to it, shall perish by it.”
—Samuel Butler (18351902)
“Who will pity a charmer that is bitten with a serpent?”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus 12:13.