Quotes About Rhetoric

You never discount a demagogue.

It seems to me that election season is just a Petri dish for anger and cynicism.

The political environment we create matters because a disturbed person cannot always tell the difference between explosive rhetoric and explosive actions.

Every liberal position is built on a fallacy.

Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history.

If you go back and look at President Reagan's speeches, they bring you to tears almost.

Godard is a phony to me. His technique is great, but he just keeps replaying the same political rhetoric.

There are no techniques in politics.

If you look at the copies of Churchill's speeches that have survived, they are heavily marked up. He was scrupulous about the impact of each word. He preferred short words and the repetition of short words. He knew everything about the techniques of rhetoric.

And, finally, Lincoln was not a good impromptu speaker; he was at his best when he could read from a carefully prepared manuscript. Though maybe a teleprompter could have helped that!

Donald Trump is a demagogue. Period. The fervor of his crowds recalls Nasser's Egypt. His convictions are illiberal. His manners are disgusting. His temper is frightening.

Leftists are fighting back against Trump not with policy differentials, but rather with insane rhetoric and temper tantrums.

It's better for candidates to suggest ideas that are responsible, not ones that are incapable of being executed. People are influenced by what their leaders tell them. And bringing the level of rhetoric down brings the temperature down.

Such flat and distant voices confirm the rhetoric of William Blake: "Grace" is underwritten by constant, speechless suffering, and "culture" begins in the callused hands of exhausted children, weaving robotically in sleep, "going through the motions Ã¢â'¬Â¦ when they were really doing nothing.

He summed up his admiration-tinged condemnation of the Communists in the simple statement: "They lie so truly.

this is the way of the Communists - using good words to do bad things

As you create your story, you create your proof; idea and structure intertwine in a rhetorical relationship

was calculated to kill off democracy.

If someone asks you why you're oppressing a world and you reply with a lot of poetic crap, no. I guess there can't be a meeting of minds.

The unary Photograph has every reason to be banal, 'unity' of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric: 'The subject,' says one handbook for amateur photographers, 'must be simple, free of useless accessories; this is called the Search for Unity.

The pleasure of the sentence is to a high degree cultural. The artifact created by rhetors, grammarians, linguists, teachers, writers, parents -- this artifact is mimicked in a more or less ludic manner; we are playing with an exceptional object, whose paradox has been articulated by linguistics: immutably structured and yet infinitely renewable: something like chess.

His eloquence . . . seemed to require opposition to give it its full force.

He generally spoke with much animation and energy, and with considerable gesture. His mind was filled with all the learning and precedence required for the occasion, enabling him to make numerous extemporaneous speeches. He seduced the listeners with hope and provoked them with fear, leading one spectator to comment that Hamilton's harangues combine the poignancy of vinegar with the smoothness of oil.

You ever notice how the folks who talk loudest about small government always seem to live in the states with the biggest subsidies? Small government would kill them dead.