Quotes About Rhetoric

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.

Give a wise man an honest brief to plead and his eloquence is no remarkable achievement.

It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.

I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric.

[JF] Kennedy was a deceitful man. He was a cold-blooded politician whose purpose was to get elected.

I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil.

The ability to talk well is to a man what cutting and polishing are to the rough diamond. The grinding does not add anything to the diamond. It merely reveals its wealth.

The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.

I'll speak for the man, or against him, whichever will do him the most good.

When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the Strawperson- American community vote.

No one can blather on like a holy man with a trapped audience. Well, maybe a politician.

The Democratic Party: Con-men elected by the ignorant and the arrogant.

True eloquence forgoes eloquence.

Democrats always were a cheap lot. They never had much money to operate on.... They would rather make a speech than a dollar. They cultivate their voice instead of their finances.

Reagan's genius as a communicator lies in his use of ambiguity. ... Ambiguity is the mother of Teflon.

I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the most powerful drug known to humanity.

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

For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.

Democrats can give us wars, you know? Democrats can play the false patriotism card.

No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

Words, without power, is mere philosophy.

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.

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

Philosophy will tell you what to say, eloquence will tell you how to say it