Quotes about rhetoric

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

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.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible

When I say "The good man gave his good dog a good meal," I use "good" analogically, for there is at the same time a similarity and a difference between a good man, a good dog, and a good meal. All three are desirable, but a good man is wise and moral, a good dog is tame and affectionate, and a good meal is tasty and nourishing. But a good man is not tasty and nourishing, except to a cannibal; a good dog is not wise and moral, except in cartoons, and a good meal is not tame and affectionate, unle

From this point of view, science - the real game in town - is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one's manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power.

House Speaker Thomas Reed could destroy an argument or expose a fallacy in fewer words than anyone else. His language was vivid and picturesque. He had a way of phrasing things which was peculiarly apt and peculiarly his own.

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

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.

Presidents are also always storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies.

whoever approaches his goal dances

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.

Rhetoric abounds in the cemeteries of reason.

Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.

Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth.

Parables release the adrenaline of urgency into our bloodstream.

John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question.

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

The art of oratory was considered part of the equipment of a statesman.

He uses the nice old words so rich in tradition to be sure I know he means it.

Talk about presidents "taking" the country hither and yon is part of the foam of presidential elections.

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.

In spite of his Cold War credentials, Kennedy still believed in the power of words.

In this era of public survival through continuous storytelling, people want someone who might surprise them.

If we do not touch the heart, we will soon weary the ear.

(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.

Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.

He singled out aspects of Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on; kept each of these as poorly defined as Quality itself, but demonstrated them by the same class reading techniques. He showed how the aspect of Quality called unity, the hanging-togetherness of a story, could be improved with a technique called an outline. The authority of an argument could be jacked up with a techniqu

...anyone still attempting to argue that Ebonics is a problem for black students or that it is somehow connected to a lack of intelligence or lack of desire to achieve is about as useful as a Betamax video cassette player, and it's time for those folks to be retired, be they teachers, administrators, or community leaders, so the rest of us can try to do some real work in the service of equal access for black students and all students. (15)

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue.

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.

As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn’t have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school itself.That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophi

History never repeats itself, historians do.

Just as the soul animates the body, so, in a way, meaning breathes life into a word.

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

Lyndon Johnson knew how to make the most of such enthusiasm and how to play on it and intensify it. He wanted his audience to become involved. He wanted their hands up in the air. And having been a schoolteacher he knew how to get their hands up. He began, in his speeches, to ask questions.

Another Mexican American in another class, approaches Victor after class, carrying his copy of Fahrenheit 451, required reading for the course. The student doesn't understand the reference to a salon. Victor explains that this is just another word for the living room. No understanding in the student's eyes. He tries Spanish: la salon. Still nothing. The student has grown up as a migrant worker. And Victor remembers the white student who had been in his class a quarter ago, who had written about

Rhetoric can be easily recognized for it is delightfully sweet sounding but it is utterly void of sacrifice, which means it is utterly void of substance. Christmas is irrefutable evidence that God never engages in rhetoric.

There is an expectation that we can talk about sins but no one must be identified as a sinner: newspapers love to describe words or deeds as “racially charged” even in those cases when it would be more honest to say “racist”; we agree that there is rampant misogyny, but misogynists are nowhere to be found; homophobia is a problem, but no one is homophobic. One cumulative effect of this policed language is that when someone dares to point out something as obvious as white privilege, it is seen as

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

Lincoln learned to summon the passions, but he never addressed his audience as sweethearts.

Chinese immigrant: "Americans make a mere practice of loving justice.

Their message is conveyed in that hortatory tone and declamatory voice used by politicians when starting a condition contrary to fact. People who aren't cowed don't spend a lot of time proclaiming they won't be cowed. Leaders who really have strengthened the voice of freedom don't don't need to reassure there electorates that they're committed to doing so.

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

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.

He was a stylist, not a thinker. He spent time trying to say things in as complicated a way as possible.

he knew, unlike most reporters, how to use pauses and the absence of words as effectively as the words themselves.

He was a man with a chest, and he wanted to give thoughtful expression to the passion of his heart.

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.

Language is not law; it is in fact a lot like music. Speech is jazz – first you learn the basic rules, and then you become good enough to improvise all the time. Writing is somewhat more like classical composition, where established forms and conditions will hold greater sway.

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.

Jefferson could strike up the band even when he was being lazy or fearful.

There is nothing quite as destructive to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the use of language that dismisses the way Jesus talks and prays and takes up instead the rhetoric of smiling salesmanship or vicious invective.

Humor and seriousness can be an unstable mix.

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

Tell someone to do something, and you change their life–for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.

When (an advocate) is not thoroughly acquainted with the real strength and weakness of his cause, he knows not where to choose the most impressive argument. When the mark is shrouded in obscurity, the only substitute for accuracy in the aim is in the multitude of the shafts.

Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may he a fortress to me all my days? For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself.

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.

Since Shakespeare had a feel for revolutionary rhetoric, let’s all cry: “Peace, freedom and liberty!

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

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details...

[Rumsfield's] reply included a complex formulation that would become inextricably associated with him: 'There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.

the matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice ...

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.

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect the rule you are breaking. If you have never heard of the rules you are breaking, you have no right to do so, and you are likely to come off like a buffoon or a barbarian. Breaking rules, using slang and archaic language can be effective, but it is just as likely to give you an audience busy with wincin

If rhetoric study was the military, grammar teachers would be the drill sergeants.

In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.

True eloquence is irresistible. It charms by its images of beauty, it enforces an argument by its vehement simplicity. Orators whose speeches are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," only prevail where truth is not understood, for knowledge and simplicity are the foundation of all true eloquence. Eloquence abounds in beautiful and natural images, sublime but simple conceptions, in passionate but plain words. Burning words appeal to the emotions as well as to the intellect; they stir the

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences—makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely.' Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions.

[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.

Talent for oratory can simulate the need for action and even thought.

They were interchangeable tools, and the catchy phrases continued without abatement.

Language has an ideological agenda that is apt to be hidden from view.

At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there's always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they're returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.

Sometime rhetoric was just another way to lie and impress persons, and he knew this

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

The Gaza leadership is stuck in its rhetoric of revolution and resistance. But the people are fed up with their leadership.

Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.

President Obama is a gifted politician. He is gifted with rhetoric virtuosity. He is gifted with the ability to lie directly to camera without blinking. And he is gifted with some of the most incompetent conservative opposition in the history of the country.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

Every president to hold office has espoused some version of Americanism - the truths that we hold self-evident, even when those truths are not always in evidence. But for all their grand rhetoric and mostly good deeds, none was able to seal the deal on the trifecta of equality, plurality and socioeconomic ascendancy. Obama has.

When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes.

The rhetoric is the key to the character. It's the verbal music of the piece.

Particularly black Americans, many of them, from quotes that I have seen and conversations I've had, are sort of insulted that the civil rights movement is being hijacked - the rhetoric of the civil rights movement is being hijacked for something like same sex marriage. Black Americans tend to have a higher degree of religiosity.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Too often, we see wedge politics and petty rhetoric used to belittle adversaries and inflame partisan divisions.

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.