Quotes About Rhetoric

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

The years of speeches about democracy and freedom were just words directed at an audience of mainly conservative Americans who had become enamoured with Africa's best known 'freedom fighter'. His commitment to democratic principles was no more real than the Maoist rhetoric Savimbi spouted in the pre-independence days when China was his biggest backer. It all comes down to this: 'If I don't win, I won't accept the result.

The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions.

You may be right that people say: 'You know what, we had Obama. He was inexperienced. The guy had great rhetoric, sounded good, looked good, but has turned out to be an utter disaster. I want someone where I have confidence and credibility that they're up to the job and that I can trust what they tell me.'

Negative politics have always been around.

Modern civilization is based on violence and slavery and fine words.

Words had to complete the work of the guns.

So who turned up the volume of ignorance up to eleven?

If one is going to change the definition of marriage to be, quote, 'same sex ' then there is absolutely no valid argument constitutionally or rhetorically you can make against multiple people getting married. These are radical social changes.

Particularly black Americans, many of them, from quotes that I have seen and conversations I've had, are sort of insulted that the civil rights movement is being hijacked - the rhetoric of the civil rights movement is being hijacked for something like same sex marriage. Black Americans tend to have a higher degree of religiosity.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks.'

Belial continued with the sincerity of a politician.

Rhetoric is the performing artist's toolbox, the lore of "playing an audience," a set of techniques and skills, practiced for many centuries, that can be drawn from to produce specific results. That

was] at home accumulating for the benefit of his master"?49 In the hill country of northern Alabama, farmer James Bell cautioned his son Henry in April 1861 not to be seduced by the rhetoric of the South's large "Negroholders." "All they want," the elder Bell advised, "is to git you pupt up and go fight for there infurnal negroes and after you do there fighting you may kiss there hine parts for o they care.

The politicians chose enemies so that they could bind their followers with hate and terror.

When voices become so shrill in a righteous cause that they are indistinguishable from the sounds of hatred, then the righteousness advocated gets lost in the din of rhetoric.

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

Report of Daniel Webster's Speech in the U.S. Senate

He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.

Impressive displays of rhetoric and linguistic force are a good way to seem important and invite a particular kind of admiration, but they tend to silence dissent and discourage deeper modes of engagement.

People want guidance, not rhetoric. They need to know what the plan of action is, and how it will be implemented. They want to be given responsibility to help solve the problem and authority to act on it.

Mencken, the acerbic social critic of the 1920s, put it: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.