L'esprit de l'escalier - Denis Diderot

The worst of it is how need forces you into certain postures. The man in need doesn’t walk like other people; he jumps, he crawls, he contorts himself, he drags himself along; he spends his life in positions that he has had to take up and maintain.

You spit on a petty thief, but you can't withhold a sort of respect from a great criminal. His courage bowls you over.
His brutality makes you shudder. What you value in everything is consistency of character.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.