Quotes About Rhetoric

When you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we're 'well-placed to weather the storm', I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line.

A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times.

Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives, I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

Words are potent weapons for all causes, good or bad.

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.

My words are my bullets.

Words are loaded pistols.

In politics, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master.

Democracy allows rhetoric, false empathy and emotion to pummel rational thinking - so it's no wonder so many politicians thrive in it.

There are dangers to riding the tiger of populism.

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.

You are a Ciceronian, not a Christian.

For they wished to fill the winepress of eloquence not with the tendrils of mere words but with the rich grape juice of good sense.

To defend his position he piles up text upon text, waves his sword like a blind-folded gladiator, rattles his noisy tongue, and ends with wounding no one but himself.

You need to teach your lips how to be persuasive," I would say, "You have a profound way of thinking, but you will lose your audience if you attack them. How could you have said that with more appeal?

I have learnt that there is great power in words, no matter how long or short they be.

AUTHORITARIAN LEADERS FREQUENTLY MANUFACTURE and demonize "enemies" to shore up support from their political base.

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

For all a rhetorician's rulesTeach nothing but to name his tools.