Analogy Paragraph

This paragraph develops an idea by means of a comparison with a similar idea.

(Note that analogy is a useful tool, but using it can also lead to problems.)

Examples:

1) Pupils are more like oysters than sausages. The job of teaching is not to stuff them
and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within. There are
pearls in each of us, if only we knew how to cultivate them with ardor and persistence.
(Sydney J. Harris, "What True Education Should Do," 1964)

2) The "great Argentine footballer, Diego Maradona, is not usually associated with
the theory of monetary policy," Mervyn King explained to an audience in the City of
London two years ago. But the player's performance for Argentina against England in the
1986 World Cup perfectly summarized modern central banking, the Bank of England's
sport-loving governor added.

Maradona's infamous "hand of God" goal, which should have been disallowed, reflected
old-fashioned central banking, Mr King said. It was full of mystique and "he was lucky to
get away with it." But the second goal, where Maradona beat five players before scoring,
even though he ran in a straight line, was an example of modern practice. "How can you
beat five players by running in a straight line? The answer is that the English defenders
reacted to what they expected Maradona to do. . . . Monetary policy works in a similar
way. Market interest rates react to what the central bank is expected to do."
(Chris Giles, "Alone Among Governors," Financial Times, September 8-9, 2007)

3) When the Reverend Jerry Falwell learned that the Supreme Court had reversed his
$200,000 judgment against Hustler magazine for the emotional distress that he had
suffered from an outrageous parody, his response was typical of those who seek to censor
speech: "Just as no person may scream 'Fire!' in a crowded theater when there is no fire,
and find cover under the First Amendment, likewise, no sleazy merchant like Larry Flynt
should be able to use the First Amendment as an excuse for maliciously and dishonestly
attacking public figures, as he has so often done."

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's classic example of unprotected speech--falsely shouting

"Fire!" in a crowded theater--has been invoked so often, by so many people, in such
diverse contexts, that it has become part of our national folk language. . . . Shouting
"Fire!" in the theater may well be the only jurisprudential analogy that has assumed the
status of folk argument. A prominent historian recently characterized it as "the most
brilliantly persuasive expression that ever came from Holmes's pen." But in spite of its
hallowed position in both the jurisprudence of the First Amendment and the arsenal of
political discourse, it is and was an inapt analogy, even in the context in which it was
originally offered."
(Alan Dershowitz, "Shouting 'Fire!'" The Atlantic, January 1989)

http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/f/qanalogy07.htm