Contextomy
Other Names
Description
Contextomy or quote mining is when you quote someone, but remove key parts of the message so that the meaning is changed, and reflects poorly on them. The quote miner can claim to be honest because the quoted words were said, but the message understood from the quote is completely different.
Example
Mr Coolguy: We must oppose Bill 123 unless we want to become a nation of criminals and racists who will run rampant across this great country!
Quote mine published as: Mr Coolguy said "We want to become a nation of criminals and racists who will run rampant across this great country!"
Famous Examples
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When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. The Bible tells us, "How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity."
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To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.
(Charles Darwin 1872)
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