An overwhelming exception is an informal fallacy similar to a hasty generalization. It is a generalization that is accurate, but comes with one or more qualifications which eliminate so many cases that what remains is much less impressive than the initial statement might have led one to believe.
Examples:
- "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" (The attempted implication (fallacious in this case) is that the Romans did nothing for us). This is a quotation from Monty Python's Life of Brian.
- "Our foreign policy has always helped other countries, except of course when it is against our National Interest..." (The false implication is that our foreign policy always helps other countries).
- "Well, I promise the answer will always be 'yes.' Unless 'no' is required." (from Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa)
See also faulty generalization for other fallacies involving generalization.
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Famous quotes containing the words overwhelming and/or exception:
“Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for wrong’s sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse—elementary.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“It has no share in the leadership of thought: it does not even reflect its current. It does not create beauty: it apes fashion. It does not produce personal skill: our actors and actresses, with the exception of a few persons with natural gifts and graces, mostly miscultivated or half-cultivated, are simply the middle-class section of the residuum.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)