Quotes About Rhetoric

In Ekaterinburg, as in many other Russian cities, the sharp and unavoidable disparity between Bolshevik rhetoric and Bolshevik practice was now becoming only too painfully clear.

Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy," and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. - W. B. Yeats

Whether it's trying to convince others that something is more true, more virtuous, or more desirable--all communication is rhetoric in action.

If you are explaining, you're losing. It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.

Language usage always has a political context.

Politicians use religion, and they get their troops riled up with religion.

Politicians must be simple and clear about how their ideas will serve the national cause. We can no longer use the complexity of today's problems as an excuse for inaction, rhyme or rhetoric that does not meet the challenges before us.

History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.

Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks you to image the world through someone else's eyes, and it allows you to try to empathize with situations that you haven't actually experienced.

While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you.

Obama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.

The 'vote for me because the other guy is scary,' nana-nana-poo-poo stuff I just find useless.

I don't believe that Donald Trump is a racist, per se. But some of the things that he does, some of the rhetoric that he uses, attracts racists and that sets the tone. And of course, you are judged by the company you keep.

I believe President Trump is more reasonable than he is generally perceived. President Trump uses strong rhetoric toward North Korea, but during the election campaign, he also said he could talk over a burger with Kim Jong-un. I am for that kind of pragmatic approach to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.

Where 'Paranormal Activity' really comes into its own is its rhetoric of legitimacy - how it uses itself to authenticate itself, and thus furthers the pretence of being real.

Law builds upon and, I should like to claim, is one of the liberal arts. It uses words of persuasion and changing definitions for practical ends.

Political linguists have argued that the right often uses stories to make an argument, while the left falls back on facts and statistics.

History is laden with belligerent leaders using humanitarian rhetoric to mask geopolitical aims. History also shows how often ill-informed moralism has led to foreign entanglements that do more harm than good.

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it's employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

I don't believe that using inflammatory rhetoric on either side of a debate is productive.

In place of presidential addresses, stump speeches, or town halls, we have Trump's demagogic mass rallies. In place of the usual jousting between the administration and the press, we have a president who fantasizes on Twitter about physically assaulting CNN.