8 April 2016

tu quoque

[too kwoh-kwe; English too kwoh-kwee, -kwey, tyoo]

Latin.

1. thou too: a retort by one charged with a crime accusing an opponent who has brought the charges of a similar crime.

– tu quoque is an ‘appeal to hypocrisy’: an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the validity of the opponent’s logical argument by asserting the opponent’s failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).

Dictionary.com

Examples from the Web for tu quoque

Historical Examples

To this she made no retort, though a tu quoque would have been most just.
Springtime and Other Essays
Francis Darwin

He used the inconclusive and dangerous argument of tu quoque.
The War and the Churches
Joseph McCabe

This is what may be called a tu quoque (thou also) argument.
Political economy
W. Stanley Jevons

Tiberius said to Galba, tu quoque, Galba, degustabis imperium.
Essays
Francis Bacon

Durrance could have countered with a tu quoque, but he refrained.
The Four Feathers
A. E. W. Mason

Of course the tu quoque retort was inevitable; but Canning’s curiosity was not gratified.
William Pitt and the Great War
John Holland Rose

The retort, however happy, is no more conclusive than other cases of the tu quoque.
Hours in a Library
Leslie Stephen

Et, quod dicendum hic siet, tu quoque perparce nimium, non laudo.
The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I.
Euripides

The student of history will, however, conceive that the Liberals have a stronger and higher defence than any tu quoque.
Handbook of Home Rule (1887)
W. E. Gladstone et al.

Altogether the effort was evidently much less to offer a justification than to make a tu quoque rejoinder.
A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1
Henry Charles Lea

Today’s quote

Karma is experience, and experience creates memory, and memory creates imagination and desire, and desire creates karma again. If I buy a cup of coffee, that’s karma. I now have that memory that might give me the potential desire for having cappuccino, and I walk into Starbucks, and there’s karma all over again.

– Deepak Chopra

On this day

8 April 1947 – birth of Larry Norman, pioneering Christian rock musician. Died 24 February 2008.

8 April 1861 – death of Elisha Graves Otis, American industrialist and founder of the Otis Elevator Company. In 1854, he put the finishing touches to his signature invention: a safety device to prevent elevators falling if the cable fails.