Examples
A simple rendition would be:
- Alice: All Scotsmen enjoy haggis.
- Bob: My uncle is a Scotsman, and he doesn't like haggis!
- Alice: Well, all true Scotsmen like haggis.
An example of a political application of the fallacy could be in asserting that "no democracy starts a war", then distinguishing between mature or "true" democracies, which never start wars, and "emerging democracies", which may start them. At issue is whether or not something labelled as an "emerging democracy" is actually a democracy or something in a different conceptual category.
In Scotland itself, the most famous rendition would be the former slogan of the one-time largest selling tabloid, The Daily Record, which proclaimed "Real Scots read The Record". The paper's editorials were always strongly in favour of the Scottish Labour Party; and, at the time, the paper's position as the largest-selling tabloid was under threat from Scottish versions of UK-wide publications such as The Scottish Sun. It was asserted that those who supported the Conservative Party or the Scottish National Party or who read English-owned papers were not "real Scots".
Read more about this topic: No True Scotsman
Famous quotes containing the word examples:
“In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people’s attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)