Quotes About Rhetoric

truly wanted to see east and west merge peacefully, but was unfortunately saddled with a populace that for the most part preferred religious rhetoric and inflammatory speech over enlightenment and liberty.

Just as, all too often, some huge crowd is seized by a vast uprising, the rabble runs amok, all slaves to passion, rocks, firebrands flying. Rage finds them arms but then, if they chance to see a man among them, one whose devotion and public service lend him weight, they stand there, stock-still with their ears alert as he rules their furor with words and calms their passion.

I love tremendous and sonorous words.

That current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people, fighting to defend freedom.

Tropes are the dreams of speech.

Truthful words are not beautiful beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive persuasive words are not good.

Remember, your tone is your superpower. It can invite people to hear more and say yes to your ask, or it can turn them off, and your ask will fizzle away.

The concept of transcending duality, that is, of going beyond the notions of pleasing and distasteful, should be applied to the realm of rhetoric. When you are listening to someone expound on his or her ideas (or if you are reading them as a letter, e-mail or news story) endeavor to stop yourself from forming any opinion of the speaker's views. The goal is neither to agree nor to disagree.

the ability to charm, to amuse, to inflame a crowd of ten thousand voters with voice and gesture did not necessarily carry with it the ability to think sensibly, to debate soberly and to vote wisely on the nation's business.

Persuasion hung upon his lips.

Cuando las ideas y los afectos confluyen, las ideas adquieren poder.

Testimony is like an arrow shot from a long-bow; its force depends on the strength of the hand that draws it. But argument is like an arrow from a cross-bow, which has equal force if drawn by a child or a man.

There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him.

The pretence of resistance to monopoly would always serve them, as it had served them before, as a plausible and popular cry.

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés as the first prize.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats—and one always secretes too much jelly.

William Butler Yeats was after the same point when he remarked: "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric; but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

the vile political rhetoric that has been ongoing in the USA for the past few years has made me doubt my reasons for becoming a U.S. citizen a few times—but not enough to change my mind. Despite what the world may think of America, the truth is that more people want to get in than want to get out.

It can be easy to forget the lessons of history, including the tragedies of war, and ramp up divisive and destructive rhetoric without concern for the consequences.

The art of those who govern consists above all in the science of employing words.

The candidates' written programme should not be too categorical, since later on adversaries might bring it up against them; in their verbal programme, however, there cannot be too much exaggeration. The most important reforms may be fearlessly promised. At the moment they are made, these exaggerations produce a great effect, and they are not binding for the future.

Notwithstanding all its progress, philosophy has been unable as yet to offer the masses any ideal that can charm them; but, as they must have their illusions at all cost, they turn instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians who accord them what they want. Not truth, but error has always been the chief factor in the evolution of nations,