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:
“But such is life, the silliest proverbs prove to be true, and when a man thinks, now it’s all right, it’s not all right by a long shot. Man proposes, God disposes, and there’s always that last straw to break the camel’s back.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
“There had been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous—and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.”
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938)