Quotes About Rhetoric

Probably the best advertising jobs of all are done by governments to convince people to go to war.

DeSantis can do the bidding of big business and big lobbyists and Donald Trump and his divisive rhetoric. I'm going to be here to do the business of the people of the state of Florida. That's the job of the governor of this state.

Sometimes Aristotle analyses his terms, but very often he takes them for granted; and in the latter case, I think, he is sometimes deceived by them.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Demagogues thrive in dim light.

But for to telle yow al hir beautee, It lyth nat in my tonge, n'yn my konnyng; I dar nat undertake so heigh a thyng. Myn Englissh eek is insufficient. It moste been a rethor excellent That koude his colours longynge for that art, If he sholde hire discryven every part. I am noon swich, I moot speke as I kan.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

And a man who speaks effectively through music is compelled to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence.

Biconceptualism is central to our politics, and it is vital to understand how it works.

Conservatives talk constantly about the centrality of morality and the family in their politics, while liberals did not talk about these things until conservatives started winning elections by doing so.

Propaganda is another manipulative use of framing.

a basic principle of framing: When you are arguing against the other side, do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame—and it won't be the frame you want.

But the facts have to be framed in appropriately moral terms so that they can be taken seriously.

The honest strategy is to use only your language and avoid using the other side's language. That will maximally activate your moral system in the moderates on the other side.

It is vital that progressives understand why just citing the facts doesn't work, and why attention to public discourse must be constant, not just focused on elections.

Because of the effect of language and imagery on the brain, the constant use of one ideology's language over the other's has an enormous effect on our politics.

The consequence is that arguing simply in terms of facts—how many people have no health insurance, how many degrees Earth has warmed in the last decade, how long it's been since the last raise in the minimum wage—will likely fall on deaf ears. That's not to say the facts aren't important. They are extremely important.

Nobody ever won an election by spitting at his political opponents.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

If we lost, then who won? Did Al Qaida win? When on the floor of the House of Representatives they cheer - they cheer - when they pass a withdrawal motion that is a certain date for surrender, what were they cheering? Surrender? Defeat?

When Bush says democracy, I often wonder what he's referring to.

I'd make a better U.S. president than George W. Bush. Bush is an idiot. I'm a better public speaker than him. It makes you wonder about the voters.

In the issue war in Iraq, it was very clear to me that the policies that were being espoused by neoconservatives were totally devoid of substance - but they marketed it wonderfully.

Too often, politicians fail to relate what they advocate to the kind of society they want to build, or they dress up policy in rhetoric which belies their actual intention. Meanwhile Joe Public is left wondering what on earth this bunch are all about and how their vision of a good society differs from that of the other lot.