Quotes About Rhetoric

The party in power almost always unapologetically engages in deficit spending, while the other party argues passionately against the evils of debt and deficits.

When one with honeyed words but evil mindPersuades the mob, great woes befall the state.

To me, a wicked man who is also eloquent seems the most guilty of them all. He'll cut your throat as bold as brass, because he can dress up murder in handsome words.

We cannot all ARGUE, but we can all PRAY; We cannot all be LEADERS, but we can all be PLEADERS; We cannot all be mighty in RHETORIC, but we can all be prevalent in PRAYER.

Mostly, I like to use my writing to fuck shit up. And I like to teach my writing students how to use some of the same queer rhetorical strategies in their writing. Witnessing them experience, for themselves, where the compulsion to fuck shit up comes from is exciting and, at times, transformative.

Eloquence is in the assembly, not merely in the speaker.

Nor did he concern himself merely with the literary study of Scriptures. In his estimation, Hebrew grammar and rhetoric constituted the stones, and philosophy the mortar which had to be used in the construction of an enduring exegesis.

For they are yet ear-kissing arguments.

All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.

Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator.

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation,Figures pedantical.

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,To stir men's blood: I only speak right on.

I want that glib and oily artTo speak and purpose not.

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,You would say it hath been all in all his study.

In law, what plea so tainted and corruptBut, being season'd with a gracious voice,Obscures the show of evil?

I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses' vein.

He was my friend, faithful, and just to me, but Brutus says, he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, whose ransoms did the general coffers fill. Did this in Caesar seem ambitious. When the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept. Ambition should me made of sterner stuff, yet Brutus says, he was ambitious and Brutus is an honorable man.

Choice word, and measured phrase; above the reach   Of ordinary men; a stately speech!

Terminological inexactitude.

The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times.

Higher taxes to bring down public debt would also put to rest the tawdry rhetoric according to which 'we' should not live at the expense of 'our children' – when the real problem is that the 'better-off' live at everyone else's expense by largely avoiding the social costs involved in the upkeep of their hunting grounds.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Woodrow Wilson intimate Edward House urged that his boss never first be approached by argument. Instead, the President could be made most receptive by laying a groundwork of 'common hatred".