Top 100 Rhetoric's Quotes

#1. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #13386
#2. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #17880
#3. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #29528
#4. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #39487
#5. He wouldn't hear of anybody's paying taxes, though he was very patriotic.

Charles Dickens

Rhetoric's Quotes #47138
#6. (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

Rhetoric's Quotes #48145
#7. Since Shakespeare had a feel for revolutionary rhetoric, let's all cry: "Peace, freedom and liberty!

Carl William Brown

Rhetoric's Quotes #76803
#8. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #92123
#9. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #92136
#10. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words.

Christian Nestell Bovee

Rhetoric's Quotes #147210
#11. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #156957
#12. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #186708
#13. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #220925
#14. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #223950
#15. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #233183
#16. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #241971
#17. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #273043
#18. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #293810
#19. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #298948
#20. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #302241
#21. Few things give rise to imprecise rhetoric like the issue of race. It's understandable, but damaging.

John Piper

Rhetoric's Quotes #321664
#22. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #327727
#23. The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha".

David Pietrusza

Rhetoric's Quotes #350091
#24. 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

Rhetoric's Quotes #352327
#25. Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks you to image the world through someone else's eyes, and it allows you to try to empathize with situations that you haven't actually experienced.

Dan Chaon

Rhetoric's Quotes #416125
#26. All this anti-Christian rhetoric that you see coming from the government, all this anti-Christian push, is not really an attack on Christianity. It's an effort to make you realize that God is your government. Your government is God.

Rafael Cruz

Rhetoric's Quotes #445857
#27. Most people here agree that the rhetoric got overblown on both sides of the Atlantic before the Iraq war, and it was a disagreement among friends over the timing, not the substance, of the Iraq war.

John S. Tanner

Rhetoric's Quotes #459415
#28. ...The coarse rhetoric and reduction of women to violently empty reproductive organs isn't a great way to argue against Trump's vulgarity. The unhinged rhetoric, violent anti-speech street protests,and hysteria currently on display don't make Trump look like he's a unique threat.

Mollie Hemingway

Rhetoric's Quotes #470122
#29. The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.

Chinua Achebe

Rhetoric's Quotes #485616
#30. There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.

Dorothy Parker

Rhetoric's Quotes #486141
#31. The Montgomery bus boycott would have happened without King, but King's oratory helped to ensure that the boycott came one of those exceptional local movements for justice that would send ripples of inspiration to oppressed people everywhere.

Troy Jackson

Rhetoric's Quotes #501755
#32. Unfortunately, President Obama's failed policies of new regulations, higher taxes, and Obamacare and his anti-business rhetoric have hit Hispanics especially hard. Big government really hurts those who are trying to make it.

Marco Rubio

Rhetoric's Quotes #502982
#33. If one writes the rules then one can contradict oneself. It's all about rhetoric, about official narratives.

Kate Zambreno

Rhetoric's Quotes #516723
#34. The actions of the University in my case make it abundantly clear that the Administration's rhetoric about Harvard's desire to attract and retain the most distinguished women in the world is empty.

Margaret Geller

Rhetoric's Quotes #519834
#35. At some point the rhetoric runs out, and we have to ask ourselves, 'Are we simply going to standby while somebody's rhetoric is good, but their actions are so lousy?' Are we going to stand up for that?

Matt Gonzalez

Rhetoric's Quotes #579717
#36. In the end, for all of Obama's grand rhetoric on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, history has doomed him to preside over the emergence of two rogue nuclear regimes (North Korea and Iran).

Thomas P.M. Barnett

Rhetoric's Quotes #586388
#37. The voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric.

Francis Quarles

Rhetoric's Quotes #591144
#38. Global warming alarmists invariably try to make their case by resorting to rhetoric, dogma, opinion, and emotion. The closest thing to scientific data in their articles is the occasional chart claiming a poorly understood correlation between atmospheric CO2 and the Earth's temperature.

Walter Cunningham

Rhetoric's Quotes #599131
#39. The sole object of Logic is the guidance of one's own thoughts: the communication of those thoughts to others falls under the consideration of Rhetoric, in the large sense in which that art was conceived by the ancients; or of the still more extensive art of Education.

John Stuart Mill

Rhetoric's Quotes #606386
#40. No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

George W. Bush

Rhetoric's Quotes #620241
#41. In the large sense, I have to disagree with Bakunin, one thing austerity rhetoric has suggested is that when the people are being beaten with a stick, they are much happier if the media call it the People's Democratic Stick.

Bruno De Oliveira

Rhetoric's Quotes #647156
#42. Politicians must be simple and clear about how their ideas will serve the national cause. We can no longer use the complexity of today's problems as an excuse for inaction, rhyme or rhetoric that does not meet the challenges before us.

Alan Siegel

Rhetoric's Quotes #665297
#43. Democracy allows rhetoric, false empathy and emotion to pummel rational thinking - so it's no wonder so many politicians thrive in it.

David Harsanyi

Rhetoric's Quotes #665482
#44. Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, tuned the English tongue.

Harold Bloom

Rhetoric's Quotes #669829
#45. None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.

Christian Nestell Bovee

Rhetoric's Quotes #685970
#46. Let's make Joe Lieberman accountable for his rhetoric. Not a penny more until he 'clarifies' his positions to the satisfaction of our creative freedom.

Joe Eszterhas

Rhetoric's Quotes #695830
#47. President Obama's version of America is a divided one - pitting us against each other based on our income level, gender, and social status. His policies have failed! We are not better off than we were 4 years ago, and no rhetoric, bumper sticker, or campaign ad can change that.

Mia Love

Rhetoric's Quotes #724663
#48. The author characterizes Hamilton's tone in the Federalist papers by saying that he never spoke of problems but of being at the last stage in the crisis.

John Ferling

Rhetoric's Quotes #752919
#49. the vile political rhetoric that has been ongoing in the USA for the past few years has made me doubt my reasons for becoming a U.S. citizen a few times - but not enough to change my mind. Despite what the world may think of America, the truth is that more people want to get in than want to get out.

Gudjon Bergmann

Rhetoric's Quotes #773135
#50. Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
The subjugate the meek
But it's the rhetoric of failure

Sting

Rhetoric's Quotes #773600
#51. How can a man who, for a significant phase of his formation, shared his master's opposition to rhetoric have in maturity composed a masterpiece of the formal study of rhetoric? This

Aristotle.

Rhetoric's Quotes #812545
#52. Competition and competitive rhetoric can be healthy. It's what drove the United States to pursue the Soviet Union into space, creating countless innovations along the way.

Wendy Kopp

Rhetoric's Quotes #871404
#53. Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.

Thomas Sowell

Rhetoric's Quotes #894305
#54. Obama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.

Judith Butler

Rhetoric's Quotes #909008
#55. The death penalty is a poor person's issue. Always remember that: after all the rhetoric that goes on in the legislative assemblies, in the end, when the deck is cast out, it is the poor who are selected to die in this country.

Helen Prejean

Rhetoric's Quotes #912262
#56. [It is not] the poet's business to use verse as an advanced form of rhetoric, nor to give to political statements the aura of eternal truth.

George Oppen

Rhetoric's Quotes #928274
#57. Even hackneyed and commonplace maxims are to be used, if they suit one's purpose: just because they are commonplace, every one seems to agree with them, and therefore they are taken for truth.

Aristotle.

Rhetoric's Quotes #929907
#58. The rhetoric on the Hill is getting very heated and it's getting quite dangerous. The gun is at the head of the American economy and Congress is holding it and its got a hair trigger. We've got to pay our bills.

Peter Welch

Rhetoric's Quotes #965991
#59. He likes to use his wit and verbal finesse to confuse others and win arguments. Although he can argue successfully that white is black and straight is crooked, you walk away with the feeling that he's won the argument not because he is correct but because you can't outwit him.

Liezi

Rhetoric's Quotes #976301
#60. In America right now, we use words like 'smart' to talk about bombs. American rhetoric is grounded in ideas of capital-G Good, capital-E Evil, and it's very clear who is on which side. But in a book you can do just the opposite. You can use all lower-case words.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Rhetoric's Quotes #980811
#61. My campaign confirmed my belief that although there are bigots in America, whose hateful rhetoric seizes the media's attention, the vast majority of people do not harbor such prejudice.

Edward Brooke

Rhetoric's Quotes #997599
#62. The rhetoric is the key to the character. It's the verbal music of the piece.

Peter Shaffer

Rhetoric's Quotes #1005691
#63. I've heard a lot of nasty rhetoric about the president. We're going to kick your rear end out of the White House and stuff. That's just not the way I behave.

John Kasich

Rhetoric's Quotes #1067003
#64. Our government has made a number of promises to the men and women who served in our nation's armed forces. Sadly, these promises of health care, education and other benefits have existed more in rhetoric than in reality.

Allen Boyd

Rhetoric's Quotes #1067373
#65. It's remarkable to watch the president, with all the weight of his ability to command rhetoric with the bully pulpit behind him, make a clear speech about climate change and why that's so important for us all to focus on. And that is a rather remarkable thing to see. It's enormously powerful.

Josh Fox

Rhetoric's Quotes #1071487
#66. Today's misery is real unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies. This is the Obama Misery Index and its at a record high. Its going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work - its going to take a new president.

Mitt Romney

Rhetoric's Quotes #1083554
#67. We really don't have a policy [on climate change]. There's a lot of rhetoric and not a lot of action.

Mark Udall

Rhetoric's Quotes #1094983
#68. Of course, logic is not the only tool used in debate, and it is helpful to be cognizant of the others. Rhetoric likely tops the list, followed by concepts such as the "burden of proof" and Occam's razor.

Ali Almossawi

Rhetoric's Quotes #1110315
#69. During his runs for the GOP presidential nomination, Mitt Romney has done a good job of mimicking Reagan's anti-government diatribes and 'better days ahead' rhetoric.

Jackson Katz

Rhetoric's Quotes #1137893
#70. HANNAH: Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It's not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard's indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television.

Tom Stoppard

Rhetoric's Quotes #1150113
#71. Israel deserves America's friendship in reality - not just in rhetoric.

Eric Cantor

Rhetoric's Quotes #1152084
#72. If something's public then it seems like the important thing is the person in that public. And the notion of rhetoric. I went to Jesuit schools that focused on first there's grammar, then there's rhetoric, and rhetoric's usually seen as a kind of degraded method, because you're trying to persuade.

Vito Acconci

Rhetoric's Quotes #1187625
#73. North Korea's whole idea is to create a crisis to solve a crisis. They're so poor and they're so desperate that they realize that this bombastic rhetoric can drive the South Korean stock market down and get the U.S. in a tizzy. And it's a game they've been playing for many, many years.

Barbara Demick

Rhetoric's Quotes #1214547
#74. I still think people like to hear from someone's heart and how they really feel than the old political rhetoric trying to not say the wrong thing because how would it look, would they get votes, lose votes.

Joe Arpaio

Rhetoric's Quotes #1225528
#75. It is astonishing how articulate one can become when alone and raving at a radio. Arguments and counter arguments, rhetoric and bombast flow from one's lips like scurf from the hair of a bank manager.

Stephen Fry

Rhetoric's Quotes #1226688
#76. So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.

Howard Dean

Rhetoric's Quotes #1233492
#77. What we all want is public safety. We don't want rhetoric that's framed through ideology.

Kamala Harris

Rhetoric's Quotes #1283864
#78. We've advanced in the construction of a true free-trade area across South America ... What's needed now is less rhetoric and more action.

Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva

Rhetoric's Quotes #1294708
#79. A campaign ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate. That means your First Amendment rights end at the tip of your opponent's nose - even in the matter of political rhetoric.

Mike Pence

Rhetoric's Quotes #1332829
#80. There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.

Dick Wolf

Rhetoric's Quotes #1345190
#81. It's very easy to have slogans and rhetoric that people will follow, but eventually the slogans fall away.

Saad Hariri

Rhetoric's Quotes #1347201
#82. Must, never, must avoid, must guard: the minatory commands came the eleven times (from the departing Eisenhower). In contrast, Kennedy's rhetoric on January 20 with a cascade of permissions: the word "let" rang out 14 times.

Rick Perlstein

Rhetoric's Quotes #1358612
#83. So I think it's important to communicate with the people in terms of what the real facts are on these proposals and try to have a discussion and a dialogue that gives people information. I think they're hungry for that rather than just political rhetoric.

John Podesta

Rhetoric's Quotes #1375589
#84. What is called "planning" in political rhetoric is the government's suppression of other people's plans by superimposing on them a collective plan, created by third parties, armed with the power of government and exempted from paying the costs that these collective plans impose on others.

Thomas Sowell

Rhetoric's Quotes #1379385
#85. Companies understand that if their employees are sick, it's really expensive. So despite the rhetoric I hear, thank God employers are still in the health-care system.

Michael Porter

Rhetoric's Quotes #1389172
#86. Lyndon Johnson's sentences were the sentences of a man with a remarkable gift for words, not long words but evocative, of a man with a remarkable gift for images, homey images of a vividness that infused the sentences with drama.

Robert A. Caro

Rhetoric's Quotes #1404527
#87. Stern people dislike rhetoric, and unfortunately it's usually stern people who are in charge: solemn fools who believe that truth is more important than beauty.

Mark Forsyth

Rhetoric's Quotes #1440201
#88. Ahmadinijad was stupid enbough to be a wolf in wolf's clothing, to expose his teeth and nails and alert the west. I can be a wolf in sheep's clothing. I have all the diplomatic and rhetoric skills to do so.

Hassan Rouhani

Rhetoric's Quotes #1444819
#89. Like ministers of information, consultants condense the message, smooth out the dissonances, unify the rhetoric, and then repeat and amplify it ad nauseam through the client's rank and file.

Matthew Stewart

Rhetoric's Quotes #1452202
#90. The royal family's existence is a constant reminder of the hollowness of John Major's rhetoric, and idiotic statements by its leading members a constant boost to the republican cause. They're fine opening hospitals. It's when they open their mouths they get into trouble.

Alastair Campbell

Rhetoric's Quotes #1483435
#91. White House officials acknowledge in broad terms that a president's time and public rhetoric are among his most valuable policy tools.

Barton Gellman

Rhetoric's Quotes #1525072
#92. When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.

Charles Krauthammer

Rhetoric's Quotes #1526140
#93. It's time to let science and medicine, not politics and rhetoric, lead us to good, sound policy.

Eliot Spitzer

Rhetoric's Quotes #1568608
#94. If you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over-the-top and so overheated, and most importantly, is not acknowledging the fact that there's nothing else [like guns] in our lives that we purchase where we don't try to make it a little safer if we can.

Barack Obama

Rhetoric's Quotes #1594566
#95. Well, teachers have been profoundly demoralized in recent years and are often treated with contempt by politicians. There's a great deal of reckless rhetoric in Washington about the mediocrity of the teaching profession - and I don't find that to be true at all.

Jonathan Kozol

Rhetoric's Quotes #1594928
#96. I think the process of being hopeful, being really opportunity oriented, not just in rhetoric but in action, showing that no one get's left behind, not just by talking about it but by doing it, I think is really a key [to political success].

John Kasich

Rhetoric's Quotes #1610975
#97. I'm hearing echoes of Bill Clinton, circa 1996, in President Obama's reelection rhetoric.

Ron Fournier

Rhetoric's Quotes #1647564
#98. I discovered that night (in his college's student politics) that an audience has a feel to it, and, in the parlance of the theater, that audience and I were together.

Ronald Reagan

Rhetoric's Quotes #1703333
#99. I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president - which means, in our time, a dangerous president - unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.

Howard Zinn

Rhetoric's Quotes #1749160
#100. Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rhetoric's Quotes #1795597

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