Quotes About Rhetoric

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Oratory is good only if it has the qualities of fitness for the occasion, propriety of style, and originality of treatment, while in the case of letters there is no such need whatsoever.

False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction.

Populists have never had a good press in Freedom's land.

Let's make Joe Lieberman accountable for his rhetoric. Not a penny more until he 'clarifies' his position to the satisfaction of our creative freedom.

Republican presidents talk about freedom. Democratic presidents talk about equality.

A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest

The fact is that as soon as they reach Baghdad gates, we will besiege them and slaughter them.

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government.

Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.

We campaign in poetry. But when we're elected we're forced to govern in prose.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Language is intrinsically political, as how we talk about something conditions how we think about it,

It's the 'big lie' theory: tell a big lie, and tell it often—and attack anyone who calls it a lie.

The president's stump speeches could carry the forced air of a Van Halen reunion tour with Sammy Hagar in for David Lee Roth.

Secondly, what is overlooked by the rhetoric of "mostly blacks and Hispanics" are those prisoners who are Arab-American, A/AAPI, or American Indian. Even

This is a classic ploy familiar to revolutionary leaders throughout history: the failure of the revolution proves the need to radicalize it. This is why, for decades now, Americans have been spectators at the dark comedy of Republicans running for office successfully against "the government"—and then, once in power, running for reelection on the promise to bring down "the government" they themselves control.

Where conservative parties were stronger, radical anti-immigrant parties found it more difficult to make headway. Where weak, the conservatives themselves often flirted with the same rhetoric: in Vienna, for instance, the ÖVP slogan of "Vienna for the Viennese" was hardly less inflammatory than the FPÖ version.

There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!