Quotes About Rhetoric

#1. I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just now saying, and about the just and unjust.

Gorgias

#2. Political rhetoric alone does not build a nation unless it is backed by the power of sacrifice, toil and virtue.

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

#3. Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.

Thomas Sowell

#4. My purpose in public address and in speech is really encapsulated in three C's: clear, concise, correct. No overblowing rhetoric or anything like that. As simple as possible: clear, concise, correct.

Bob Sheppard

#5. Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.

Jeremy Collier

#6. Thought can be lofty without being elegant, but to the extent it lacks elegance it will have less effect on others. Force without finesse is mere mass.

Fernando Pessoa

#7. Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of Plato's in which the falsehood of all mankind is reflected.

Plato

#8. The Communist Manifesto as political rhetoric has an almost biblical force.

Eric Hobsbawm

#9. When, in his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan famously said government is the problem, not the solution, he established the Republican mantra that has not changed in all the years since. It was a clever bit of rhetoric, but it has turned too many Republicans into economic simpletons.

David Horsey

#10. Of Rhetoric various definitions have been given by different writers; who, however, seem not so much to have disagreed in their conceptions of the nature of the same thing, as to have had different things in view while they employed the same term.

Richard Whately

#11. Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

Aristotle.

#12. Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.

Russell Baker

#13. How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?

Thomas Sowell

#14. At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.

Winston Churchill

#15. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them.

Edwin H. Friedman

#16. Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.

Bruce Schneier

#17. Lewis had developed a trademark style, slow enough for note taking, loud enough to rouse the dullest listener, straightforward, abundantly furnished with quotations, and lavish in wit.

Philip Zaleski

#18. He did what good lawyers always do. He shifted his argument in the direction his audience was already going.

Jeffrey Toobin

#19. People are tired of the status quo. You see that in various movements in and out of our [the Republicans]party, but most candidates are offering hollow rhetoric, not specific solutions.

Carly Fiorina

#20. I am the first to admit that I am no great orator or no person that got where I have gotten by any William Jennings Bryan technique.

Gerald R. Ford

#21. He wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic.

Charles Dickens

#22. It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success.

Stephen R. Covey

#23. (Emerson's) aphorisms tend to be chicken soup for the academic soul or gobledygook of a man who prefers the sounds of words to their meanings.

Micah Mattix

#24. How Horrid has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror
puberty, public disgrace
then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.

Alison Bechdel

#25. Rhetoric is cheap, evidence comes more dearly.

John Fund

#26. Theater is perhaps one of the few places left where we are in a dialogue right now. Everything has become so partisan, and the rhetoric has become so heated, that conversation is almost impossible.

Paula Vogel

#27. Traffic will not yield to our will, neither will global finances, the environment, political rhetoric, nor people in general. There is no way to solve the problem of stress through blaming environmental factors.

Gudjon Bergmann

#28. Steady and righteous we may be, my friend, but without courage to risk ourselves for our brother, we are but politicians - blustering whores to rhetoric.

Christopher Moore

#29. The American people must not buy into the Democrat rhetoric.

Virginia Foxx

#30. The quality of rhetoric emanating from the psychedelic community must improve radically. If it does not, we will forfeit the reclamation of our birthright and all opportunity for exploring the psychedelic dimension will be closed off.

Terence McKenna

#31. Since Shakespeare had a feel for revolutionary rhetoric, let's all cry: "Peace, freedom and liberty!

Carl William Brown

#32. He could be as memorable an orator as his father, particularly when he was speaking on that topic that had captured his imagination;

Robert A. Caro

#33. And it's significant that he has been using the, you know, language of betrayal in his rhetoric about Turkey. He called the shoot down a treacherous stab in the back by an accomplice of the terrorists. And that suggests that there could still be some harsh revenge in store for Turkey.

Corey Flintoff

#34. Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong ... And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.

Plato

#35. Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.

W.B.Yeats

#36. We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government.

Dennis Cardoza

#37. Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?

Peter Hitchens

#38. Throughout history, even the harshest and most shameful measures are regularly accompanied by professions of noble intent - and rhetoric about bestowing freedom and independence.

Noam Chomsky

#39. Rhetoric is communication that attempts to coordinate social action...Its goal is to influence human choices on specific matters that require immediate attention

Gerard Hauser

#40. The period is one of the most complicated and concepts of classical rhetoric. Nobody in the ancient world could quite decide what it meant, but they were united in the belief that it was terribly, terribly important.

Mark Forsyth

#41. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words.

Christian Nestell Bovee

#42. Arguments, like men, are often pretenders.

Plato

#43. Passion is all too often a cover for overwork cloaked in the rhetoric of self-fulfillment.

Miya Tokumitsu

#44. There is no regard for human lives, or local national interests. It is because the West, despite its hypocritical rhetoric (political correctness) does not really consider non-whites and non-Christians as human beings.

Andre Vltchek

#45. No one is born with good character; it's not a hereditary trait. And it isn't determined by a single noble act. Character is established by conscientious adherence to moral values, not by lofty rhetoric or good intentions.

Michael Josephson

#46. Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.

Camille Paglia

#47. From her character in the HBO miniseries: The art of politics is the art of applying the seat of the britches to the seat of the chair.

Abigail Adams

#48. Liberals were just as engaged and using the rhetoric of a sort of a battle with the Soviets and with Communism in general, with an evil empire.

Jeff Sharlet

#49. It is true that despite occasional gleams of Churchillian eloquence he [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] usually spoke poorly. He was far more effective in conversations a deux. But those who dismiss him as shallow because his rhetoric was fustian err.

William Manchester

#50. While sticks and stones break bones, words can never hurt? Manifestly untrue. Politics everywhere are holistic, interconnected, and the rhetoric of right or left can produce toxic atmospheres in which lunacy thrives.

Phillip Adams

#51. I think he could have made most of the trips and gone to most of the fund-raisers if he would have avoided the partisan rhetoric and talked to the country as President in each of these appearances rather than to the narrow partisan audiences.

Robert Teeter

#52. Given his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan, I think I myself, our commanders, and our troops had expected more commitment to the cause and more passion for it from him. ...I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission." Pg. 299

Robert M. Gates

#53. Contrary to the utopian rhetoric of social media enthusiasts, the Internet often makes the jump from deliberation to participation even more difficult, thwarting collective action under the heavy pressure of never-ending internal debate.

Evgeny Morozov

#54. On the other side, I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented, is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech.

Ed Gillespie

#55. Today violence is the rhetoric of the period.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

#56. Greeley knew no language but his, but of that, he possessed a most extraordinary mastery. An employee

Harold Holzer

#57. So much of western self-perception and intellectual worldview has been shaped by the moral rhetoric of the Cold War, the discourse in which communism featured as a clear enemy, determined to rule the world.

Pankaj Mishra

#58. J.R.R. Tolkien, said a student, "could turn a lecture room into a mead hall in which he was the bard and we were the feasting, listening guests.

Philip Zaleski

#59. A lot of the Republican rhetoric better than the Democrats'. But when they're in office, it's pretty much the same thing. It's serving their supporters, it's corporate welfare, it's cronyism which is so destructive, particularly to the disadvantaged.

Charles Koch

#60. I've said before: If Osama bin Laden was a Christian, Iraq was the Christmas present he always wanted but never expected his parents to give. It validated for the Muslim world virtually all of bin Laden's rhetoric. He had always said the Americans will destroy any strong Muslim regime, and we did.

Michael Scheuer

#61. Mitt Romney's primary season embrace of the social and economic agenda of the more rabid elements of his party doomed him, especially the shrill immigration rhetoric and the harshly insensitive theory that no additional sacrifice or contribution should be sought from those at the top.

Eliot Spitzer

#62. Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.

Philip Zaleski

#63. The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends ... the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.

Kenneth Burke

#64. I definitely don't agree with that sort of rhetoric from the United States - this idea that all the major conflicts of our age need to be solved militarily.

Bernard-Henri Levy

#65. Rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination

W.B.Yeats

#66. The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

Richard Whately

#67. Nevertheless, Rhetoric is useful, because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible.

Aristotle.

#68. When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#69. The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.

Adolf Hitler

#70. trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic)

Anonymous

#71. Whether it's trying to convince others that something is more true, more virtuous, or more desirable
all communication is rhetoric in action.

Leonard Koren

#72. The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.

Immanuel Kant

#73. De Quincey compared the two arts of rhetoric, logos and pathos, to rudder and sail. The first guides discourse and the second powers it (Thonssen and Baird, 1948, p. 358). Even

Haddon Robinson

#74. Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order.

Christopher Lasch

#75. Even Stalin proclaimed his love for democracy. We do not learn about the nature of systems of power by listening to their rhetoric.

Noam Chomsky

#76. Democrats were simply hoping to win some political points by getting their outlandish rhetoric published in the newspapers and heard on the talk shows.

John Doolittle

#77. I just find Bobby Kennedy's short campaign for president so inspiring because his rhetoric identified what America can be like if we care about each other.

Tim Ryan

#78. The political environment we create matters because a disturbed person cannot always tell the difference between explosive rhetoric and explosive actions.

Madeleine M. Kunin

#79. Now if you have proofs to bring forward, bring them forward, and your moral discourse as well; if you have no enthymemes, then fall back upon moral discourse: after all, it is more fitting for a good man to display himself as an honest fellow than as a subtle reasoner.

Aristotle.

#80. A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language you don't hear just with your ears.

Frank Herbert

#81. He (Larry Summers) can frame arguments with such force and conviction that people think he knows more than he does.

Ron Suskind

#82. However tiresome to others, the most indefatigable orator is never tedious to himself. The sound of his own voice never loses its harmony to his own ear; and among the delusions, which self-love is ever assiduous in attempting to pass upon virtue, he fancies himself to be sounding the sweetest tones

John Quincy Adams

#83. As the U.S., much of Europe, and the U.K. shift toward the political right, the rhetoric grows more insular, defensive, and protective.

Samantha Harvey

#84. The law needs to be applied to everyone equally and the Home Office has previous in banning hate preachers engaging in rhetoric similar to that of [Donald] Trump.

Tulip Siddiq

#85. We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.

John F. Kerry

#86. One of the principles that we operate on in this country is that leaders are held accountable. The simple truth is that we went into Iraq on the basis of some intuition, some fear, and some exaggerated rhetoric and some very, very scanty evidence.

Wesley Clark

#87. Few things give rise to imprecise rhetoric like the issue of race. It's understandable, but damaging.

John Piper

#88. You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.

Lionel Shriver

#89. White House is ranting up its rhetoric for Republicans, using wild words to attack them over the budget standoff.

Andrea Tantaros

#90. But it is the subjects, the conversations, the facts we shy away from, which claim us in the form of writer's block, as mere rhetoric, as hysteria, insomnia, and constriction of the throat.

Adrienne Rich

#91. We have a lot of rhetoric today about "high rigor" and you often hear terms like that thrown about when discussing the Common Core. But the American education system historically has not embraced intellectual seriousness.

Dana Goldstein

#92. Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you'll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level. The continuing cry for "basic skills" practice is a smoke screen

John Taylor Gatto

#93. At times, said the founder of the Chicago Tribune, Lincoln seemed to reach into the clouds and take out the thunderbolts.

Harold Holzer

#94. Reader, if thou intendest to go any farther, I would entreat thee to stay here a little. If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again, - thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell!

John Owen

#95. It is useful to remember that no matter where we turn, there is rarely any shortage of elevated ideals to accompany the resort to violence.

Noam Chomsky

#96. I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.

Barry Hannah

#97. The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha".

David Pietrusza

#98. Sure, Malcolm Turnbull is less anti-science and anti-culture than [Tony] Abbott, but low bar, and there's not a lot to show for it beyond rhetoric.

Justine Larbalestier

#99. It is thus evident that Rhetoric does not deal with any one definite class of subjects, but, like Dialectic, [is of general application]; also, that it is useful; and further, that its function is not so much to persuade, as to find out in each case the existing means of persuasion.

Aristotle.

#100. Meanwhile, the separation of the races had begun to emerge as a comprehensive pattern throughout the South, driven in large part by the rhetoric of the planter elite, who hoped to reestablish a system of control that would ensure a low-paid, submissive labor force.

Michelle Alexander