Quotes About Rhetoric

political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party—an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

Toda la propaganda de guerra, todos los gritos y mentiras y odio, provienen invariablemente de gente que no está peleando.»

Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality. Now

El lenguaje político —y, aunque con variaciones, esto es cierto en el caso de todos los partidos, desde los conservadores hasta los anarquistas— está diseñado para que las mentiras suenen a verdad y los asesinatos parezcan algo respetable; para dar aspecto de solidez a lo que es puro humo.

I mean that almost nobody seems to feel that an opponent deserves a fair hearing or that the objective truth matters so long as you can score a neat debating point.

She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and

Ce n'est pas la première fois que je remarque combien, en France particulièrement, les mots ont plus d'empire que les idées. (It's not the first time I've noticed how much more power words have than ideas, particularly in France.)

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

Professor Osterweis taught us how to structure a speech: introduction, three main points, peroration, and conclusion.

how to structure a speech: introduction, three main points, peroration, and conclusion.

When I get passionate or worked up about an issue, I say things that the Conservatives and opponents and critics like to pounce on.

President Clinton is going to embrace President Obama, as he should. They are working together. They're different kinds of people. Obama is cool, Clinton is a schmoozer. Both are great speakers. It's a great merging of the party.

A magic trick of any sort works because you tell yourself a story about what you see. And politicians use this all the time in their own way by throwing a load of statistics at you when things don't quite follow and then saying, 'So therefore blah,' and you believe that 'blah' thing because of the confusion that's come before.

We live in the greatest country in the world, but the tone and destructive rhetoric across the ideological spectrum is tearing our country apart and we must return to a society that works towards finding common ground on issues where we disagree.

To be considered presidential timber, there has to be a measure in the way you present your argument.

Most people here agree that the rhetoric got overblown on both sides of the Atlantic before the Iraq war, and it was a disagreement among friends over the timing, not the substance, of the Iraq war.

I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.

In the world of opinion writing, there's something called the 'to be sure' paragraph. A sort of rhetorical antibiotic, it seeks to defend against critics by injecting a tiny bit of counter-argument before moving on with the main point.

The Grand Old Party's abiding affection for a 'bigger and better' presidency isn't entirely logical. After all, the Obama presidency commenced with an effort to reenact the Hundred Days. Yet President Obama's first-term economic performance itself was not 'big' but mediocre - tiny, even.

A campaign ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate. That means your First Amendment rights end at the tip of your opponent's nose - even in the matter of political rhetoric.