Quotes About Rhetoric

He never, even in the most casual conversation with friends, spoke a sentence which did not sound as if it was ready for the air.

This translates into a hypothesis about actually existing capitalism: that the more it is structured and organized according to this utopian liberal or neoliberal vision, the greater the class inequalities. And there is, it goes without saying, plenty of evidence to support the view that the rhetoric of free markets and free trade and their supposed universal benefits to which we have been subjected these past thirty years have produced exactly the result that Marx would expect:

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was 272 words and he delivered it under three minutes. He labored on it for days. The "featured speaker," Edward Everett, rambled on for two hours. Most people don't even remember his name, never mind what he said.

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

Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.

As Robespierre once said of Marat, 'The man was dangerous: he believed in what he said.' Hitler

Obama has said his opponents were trying to 'scare and mislead the American people,' when in fact his opponents are the American people whom he is trying to scare and mislead.

Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts. —Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand

By God, we will make the fire eat up half of Isreal if it tries to do anything against Iraq.

(The United States) is the same as al-Qaeda, under a different color flag, calling on the name a different God to sanction and approve our murder and our mayhem!

The voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric.

When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.

Campaigns are no longer high-minded exchanges of ideas, even though God knows we need more good ones - ideas, that is.

These mercenaries, I swear by God, those who are still in Washington, they have sent their troops to be burned.

I wanted to touch on the piece where often politicians use "god" to excuse their actions.

God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

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.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

I try to be as ruthless as possible. I ask myself of each sentence, "Is it clear? Is it true? Does it feel good?" And if it's not, then I rewrite it.

Rush Limbaugh makes money getting simpleminded people to feel good about their intellectually undernourished brain spasms. He's very good at it, and I scarcely believe a fraction of what he says.

Each achieves one or both of two objectives — making liberals feel good about themselves and being good to liberal candidates.

Appearances are significant, and never more than in politics. You can always sway the crowd, provided you have a good story.

It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.