Quotes About Rhetoric

Obama has been successfully dividing Americans like no other president in history.

The only time the issue of abortion ever comes up - and you'll notice this pattern - is when there's a presidential election coming around. When there's a presidential election, all of a sudden, 'Oh my God, we care so much about the babies.'

Even President Obama has not suggested he could get another country to pay for building a wall between Mexico and the United States.

Facts are not liberals' strong suit. Rhetoric is.

Mr. Obama would be a disheartening president even during a super boom, with his grim demeanor and empty rhetoric, as well as his obvious hatred of business bravado.

the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs, instead of these village symbols,—and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language.

Speech is power; speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.

The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them. It draws the children from their play, the old from their arm-chairs, the invalid from his warm chamber: it holds the hearer fast; steals away his feet, that he shall not depart; his memory, that he shall not remember the most pressing affairs; his belief, that he shall not admit any opposing considerations.

Giving yourself the privilege of destroying other positions while parking your own position in an unidentifiable location is a form of linguistic terrorism.

You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense... Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

but heavens! how that man could talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith—don't you see?—he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything—anything. He would have been a splendid Ã¢â'¬Å"leader of an extreme party.' 'What party?' I asked. 'Any party,' answered the other. 'He was an—an—extremist.

And in this case his great practice in it was assisted by hate, which, like love, has an eloquence of its own.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH

Jefferson was not a profound political thinker. He was, however, an utterly brilliant political rhetorician and visionary. The genius of his vision is to propose that our deepest yearnings for personal freedom are in fact attainable. The genius of his rhetoric is to articulate irreconcilable human urges at a sufficiently abstract level to mask their mutual exclusiveness.

Mr. Henry had without a doubt the greatest power to persuade, [but] Mr. Madison had the great power to convince.

But in early time, when writing is difficult, reading rare, and representation undiscovered, those who are to be guided by the discussion must hear it with their own ears, must be brought face to face with the orator, and must feel his influence for themselves.

This exceptionalism is deeply present in American public rhetoric and every political leader must subscribe to it. Moreover, appeal to this exceptionalism as God's chosen people can cover a multitude of sins, for example, economic injustice and political oligarchy, all in the name of chosenness.

My judgment is that as long as the pastors of the church are embarrassed by this urgent language to God and assume in our Enlightenment model that such rhetoric has no actual force, we will not get very far in the struggle for justice.

It is only a poem, and we might say rightly that singing a song does not change reality. However, we must not say that with too much conviction. The evocation of an alternative reality consists at least in part in the battle for language and the legitimization of a new rhetoric. The language of the empire is surely the language of managed reality, of production and schedule and market. But that language will never permit or cause freedom because there is no newness in it. Doxology

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

In argument, truth always prevails finally in politics, falsehood always.

The tongue is the only instrument that gets sharper with use.

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.