Rhetoric Quotes

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.

Parables release the adrenaline of urgency into our bloodstream.

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.

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

whoever approaches his goal dances

Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth.

(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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Pandering candidates often promise that they can make the pain go away.

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.

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

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

[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.

The weaker the argument the louder and more frequent the rhetoric.

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.

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

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

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

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