Quotes About Rhetoric

Since Lenin wrote as he spoke, his political writings had something of the compelling quality of his political speeches.

It is hard to believe that Lenin would not have won the case had his health permitted him to argue it before the court of the party congress. But when the

There's very little that Idi Amin and Newt Gingrich have in common, but they both used words to shape how people think about things without regard for the truth.

Attacking a person, rather than the person's position or argument, is usually easier as well as psychologically more satisfying to those who divide the world into two classes of people—those who agree with them and are therefore good and right, and those who disagree with them and are therefore evil and wrong.

Power cannot accrue to those who squander their treasure of words.

Mao actually encouraged China's disagreements with the Soviet Union and the United States; without clear-cut enemies, he believed, his people would lose any sense of what Chinese Communism meant. A sharply defined enemy is a far stronger argument for your side than all the words you could possibly put together.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. —Albert Camus

I found, for example, that Cicero was fond of repeating certain phrases, and these I learned to reduce to a line, or even a few dots--thus proving what most people already know, that politicians essentially say the same thing over and over again.

His theory of oratory, the exact opposite of the Asiatics', was simple: don't move about too much, hold your head straight, stick to the point, make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, and when you've won their sympathy, sit down quickly –

He had learned well from Cicero the tricks of political campaigning: keep your speeches short, remember names, tell jokes, put on a show; above all, render an issue, however complex, into a story anyone can grasp.

What are the only weapons I possess, Tiro? he asked me, and then he answered his own question. These. he said, gesturing at his books. Words. Caesar and Pompey have their soldiers, Crassus his wealth, Clodius his bullies on the street. My only legions are my words. By language I rose, and by language I shall survive.

Nowadays, of course, most senators employ a slave or two two out their speeches; I have even heard of some who have no idea of what they are going to say until the next is place in front of them; how these fellows can call themselves statesman defeats me

But as Cicero had long tried to convince him, a speech is a performance, not a philosophical discourse: it must appeal to the emotions more than to the intellect

is one of the most potent myths in politics, believe me.

Cicero's first law of rhetoric, that a speech must always contain at least one surprise.

And what is written well and what is written badly...need we ask Lysias or any other poet or orator who ever wrote or will write either a political or other work, in meter or out of meter, poet or prose writer, to teach us this? What is good, PhÊdrus, and what is not good...need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

Given his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan, I think I myself, our commanders, and our troops had expected more commitment to the cause and more passion for it from him. ...I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission.

You, sir, what are the three kinds of particular rhetoric according to subject matter discussed?" But Phaedrus is prepared. "Forensic, deliberative and epideictic," he answers calmly. "What are the epideictic techniques?" "The technique of identifying likenesses, the technique of praise, that of encomium and that of amplification.

Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and the myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know. The

They spoke in fragments and ellipses, in paraphrastics and aposiopesis, in a style abundant in chiasmus, metonymy, meiosis, oxymoron, and zeugma; their dazzling rhetorical techniques left him baffled and uncomfortable, which beyond much doubt was their intention.

If you want to be a leader of people, then you need to be a master of words.

want that glib and oily art, To speak and purpose not.

When speculation becomes "truth," opinion "fact," and prejudice a "holy cause," demagoguery is not far behind.

If Michael Steele doesn't make you sad, well, then there's radio host Rush Limbaugh, no longer content with wanting the President to fail, Rush is now calling out Mr. Obama as a girly man.