Quotes About Rhetoric

It is also an error in democracies for the demagogues to endeavour to make the common people superior to the laws; and thus by setting them at variance with the rich, dividing one city into two; whereas they ought rather to speak in favour of the rich.

It's as if we have returned to the era of Protagoras and the sophists, the era when the art of persuasion --for which slogans, commercials, public propaganda meetings, newspapers, cinema, radio are the modern equivalent-- took the place of thought, determined the fate of cities and accomplished coups

I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts.

Diction involves the choice of words for their precise meaning and sound, the arrangement of those words, and their selection for effect.

I bet Obama had a great one prepared," says Seb. "I almost wish we'd been invaded by Martians, just so I could have heard it.

Sei abile con la lingua. Ma non conosco nessun uomo onesto che trovi parole belle per ogni circostanza

But all was false and hollow; through his tongueDropp'd manna, and could make the worse appearThe better reason.

Ornate rhetoric taught out of the rule of Plato…. To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.

Three things matter in a speech - who says it, how he says it and what he says, and of the three, the latter matters the least

By now it is customary, indeed obligatory, to regard Hitler's speeches as nothing but falsehoods aimed at fomenting mischief and stirring up hate, but Hitler was like any skilled fabricator: he interwove the true with the false, using the former to convince his hearers of the latter.

If the situation was hopeless, their propoganda would be unessasary

This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud he sits upon the throne.

Not just because analogies make arguments, but because they often trigger emotions that override the circuits of reason, and sometimes at a subconscious level.

Governments produced by the most banal of electoral victories, like those produced by the crudest of coups d'état, will always feel obliged to dress themselves up linguistically in some way.

Most asteroids, like most politicians, give off more heat than light.

Syllables govern the world.

The sole object of Logic is the guidance of one's own thoughts: the communication of those thoughts to others falls under the consideration of Rhetoric, in the large sense in which that art was conceived by the ancients; or of the still more extensive art of Education.

All Demosthenes' eloquence could never revive a body that luxury and the arts had enervated

The poet is poor, but the orator is made by cultivation." Horace

If the Governor speaks of ideals, they are "selfless ideals"; if he speaks of paths to be taken, they are "untrod paths." The Governor is one who leaves no cliché unturned

Robespierre fu un capo popolare, nel senso che i suoi discorsi e la sua fama erano noti, ma personalmente non si trovò mai alla testa della folla rivoluzionaria in nessuna situazione decisiva, come accadde del resto ad altri celebri capi rivoluzionari.

The leading statesmen in a free country have great momentary power. They settle the conversation of mankind. It is they who, by a great speech or two, determine what shall be said and what shall be written for long after.

As a lawyer, I was paid to write persuasively. I was paid to take the same set of facts the other side had and make you believe that my version of it was true, while the other side was doing the exact same thing.

the seven "liberal arts": Grammar, the foundation of science; Logic, which differentiates the true from the false; Rhetoric, the source of law; Arithmetic, the foundation of order because "without numbers there is nothing"; Geometry, the science of measurement; Astronomy, the most noble of the sciences because it is connected with Divinity and Theology; and lastly Music.