# Tu quoque

*Also called: You too, appeal to hypocrisy*

- **Cluster:** Attacks on the source — Judging the speaker instead of the argument
- **Page:** https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/tu-quoque/
- **In Arabic:** https://fallacy.wiki/ar/fallacy/tu-quoque.md
- **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

## What it is

Dismissing a claim because the speaker does not live up to it.

## In the wild

> You cannot tell me to quit smoking, you smoke too.

## How to answer it

Grant the hypocrisy and ask whether the advice is still correct.

## Origin and naming

Latin for 'you too'. It is counted as a species of ad hominem: instead of meeting the argument, the reply charges the arguer with inconsistency. The hypocrisy may be real — and the advice may still be right.

## More places it shows up

- A doctor tells a patient to cut salt; the patient replies, 'You eat fast food between shifts, I have seen the wrappers.'
- A teammate says the pull request is too large to review safely; the author answers, 'Yours last sprint was twice this size.'
- A neighbor asks you to leash your dog near the playground; you answer, 'Yours dug up my flowerbed all April.'
- A finance minister urges spending cuts at a press conference, and the first question is, 'Didn't your government widen the deficit last year?' — the proposal itself is never discussed.

## How to spot it

- Notice when the reply starts with 'you' instead of 'that claim'.
- Notice when catching hypocrisy is treated as winning the point.
- Notice when conceding 'yes, the speaker is inconsistent' changes nothing about the truth of the advice.

## Nearby

- [Ad hominem](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/ad-hominem.md)
- [Whataboutism](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/whataboutism.md)
- [Two wrongs make a right](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/two-wrongs.md)

## Read more

- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque)
- [The Fallacy Files](https://fallacyfiles.org/tuquoque.html)

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From fallacy.wiki — a bilingual field guide to 91 logical fallacies, published by phi holdings. Licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse freely with attribution to fallacy.wiki.