Quotes About Rhetoric

Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.

Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy.

One could drive a prairie schooner through any part of his argument and never scrape against a fact.

Tears are not arguments.

The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading

Argument should be polite as well as logical.

Epithets are not arguments. Abuse does not persuade.

A witty illustration or an apt story will accomplish more than columns of argument.

If you can't reduce your argument to a few crisp words and phrases, there's something wrong with your argument.

An argument which proves too much, proves nothing.

Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp.

Demosthenes, when taunted by Pytheas that all his arguments "smelled of the lamp," replied, "Yes, but your lamp and mine, my friend, do not witness the same labours.

Arguments out of a petty mouth are unanswerable.

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

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.

Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what you don't believe yourself.

Politics with me isn't theater. It's performance art. Sometimes, for its own sake.

Social Engineering - The art of replacing what works with what sounds good.

[M]ere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion.

There is not only an art, but an eloquence in it.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly.

Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.

The use of words by human agents to form attitudes or induce actionsin other human agents.