A straw man, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally, is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
Famous quotes containing the words straw and/or man:
“There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care a straw who gets the credit for it.”
—C.E. (Charles Edward)
“Women are to be lifted up to a physical equality with man by placing upon their shoulders equal burdens of labor, equal responsibilities of state-craft; they are to be brought down from their altruistic heights by being released from all obligations of purity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and made free of the world of passion and self-indulgence, after the model set them by men of low and materialistic ideals.”
—Caroline Fairfield Corbin (b. c. 1835–?)