Quotes About Rhetoric

Cicero once said of Cato, 'he talks as if he were in the Republic of Plato, when in fact he is in the crap of Romulus'.

Other classical writers insisted that the tone and timbre of women's speech always threatened to subvert not just the voice of the male orator but also the social and political stability, the health, of the whole state.

But reason was helpless against demagogy.

We have an out-of-control id taunting a tightly controlled superego. We have the king of winging it versus the queen of homework. She says he's too unpredictable to be president, he says she's too predictable. Trump can excite his crowds but falters on substance; Hillary has substance but falters on exciting her crowds. "The boor versus the bore," Time's Charlotte Alter call it.

For the next few weeks there will be no political discussions in America: we have entered the Season of Platitudes—an election campaign. All issues, principles and definitions vanish during an election campaign. They dissolve into a fog of rubber terms that can mean anything to anyone—while the candidates compete for how to be misunderstood-in the greatest number of ways by the greatest number of people.

This era is overwhelmed by violence both in rhetoric and reality, communicating not through inclusion but elimination.

Still, it wasn't until February 10, 2011, the day before Hosni Mubarak stepped down in Egypt, that this absurd theory really got traction. During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Trump hinted that he might run for president, asserting that "our current president came out of nowhere….The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don't know who he is. It's crazy.

Take whatever question they give you, give 'em a quick line to make it seem like you answered it…and then talk about what you want to talk about.

He said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and people would still vote for him. Am I dreaming this? Willa asked. No. No. He said that. It couldn't have been more than a week ago. Apparently he was right. Iano, nobody gets away with murder. You can't behave like a madman when you're running for public office. That kind of trash talk is supposed to end careers.

propositional statements

a tall man of no age in faded, pegged jeans and a denim jacket. His pockets were stuffed with fifty different kinds of conflicting literature—pamphlets for all seasons, rhetoric for all reasons.

Because when Eddie's in that fuckin zone, he could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.

It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. Only basic goodness gives life to technique.

My duplicity will breed distrust, and everything I do—even using so-called good human relations techniques—will be perceived as manipulative. It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success.

Words are indeed the true weapons of mass destruction.

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe.

He who frames an issue, wins that issue more often than not. - unknown

You can write with clarity and with flair, too. And though the emphasis is on nonfiction, the explanations should be useful to fiction writers as well, because many principles of style apply whether the world being written about is real or imaginary. I like to think they might also be helpful to poets, orators, and other creative wordsmiths, who need to know the canons of pedestrian prose to flout them for rhetorical effect.

But after the September 11, 2001, attacks, terrorism became an obsession. Pundits and politicians turned up the rhetoric to eleven, and the word existential (generally modifying threat or crisis) had not seen as much use since the heyday of Sartre and Camus.

Algunos experimentos han demostrado que a las personas les convence más un discurso político cuando el orador apela a su corazón y su mente con metáforas relacionadas con la familia.

what is style, after all, but the effective use of words to engage the human mind?

legítimas, rápidas, justas, moderados y humanas diferencian sus consejos de la retórica de la mano dura contra la delincuencia preferida por los políticos de derechas.

when the complexity of the leaders' speeches declined, war followed.

The problem with dystopian rhetoric is that if people believe that the country is a flaming dumpster, they will be receptive to the perennial appeal of demagogues: "What do you have to lose?" If the media and intellectuals instead put events into statistical and historical context, they could help answer that question.