Rhetoric quotes:

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Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance. -- Mel Brooks
Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big. -- Theodore Roosevelt
Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action... -- Theodore Roosevelt
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. -- Plato
Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order. -- Jeremy Collier
Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. -- Aristotle
Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it. -- Jonathan Swift
Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols. -- Kenneth Burke
Rhetoric paints with a broad brush. -- George Carlin
Rhetoric never won a revolution yet. -- Shirley Chisholm
Power is the most persuasive rhetoric. -- Friedrich Schiller
Rhetoric is no substitute for reality. -- Thomas Sowell
Rhetoric is not important. Actions are. -- Nelson Mandela
Rhetoric is cheap, evidence comes more dearly. -- John Fund
Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth. -- Anna Deavere Smith
Facts are not liberals' strong suit. Rhetoric is. -- Thomas Sowell
Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience. -- Paul Getty
Discourse says, 'You are.' Rhetoric preserves the freedom to say, 'I am not. -- Samuel R. Delany
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. -- William Butler Yeats
Rhetoric can be razor sharp, and just as one needs to take some comments seriously, others should not be. -- Alexander Stubb
Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life. -- Joseph Wood Krutch
Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order. -- Christopher Lasch
Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. -- Aristotle
Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others. -- Ray Comfort
Rhetoric completes the tools of learning. Dialectic zeros in on the logic of things, of particular systems of thought or subjects. Rhetoric takes the next grand step and brings all these subjects together into one whole. -- William Blake
The business and design of the Royal Society is: To improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanic practices, Engines and Inventions by Experiments-(not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetoric or Logick). -- Robert Hooke
The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it. -- Mary Astell
No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language; because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar.. -- Richard Whately
Of Rhetoric various definitions have been given by different writers; who, however, seem not so much to have disagreed in their conceptions of the nature of the same thing, as to have had different things in view while they employed the same term. -- Richard Whately
And all these questions I ask myself. It is not in a spirit of curiosity. I cannot be silent. About myself I need know nothing. Here all is clear. No, all is not clear. But the discourse must go on. So one invents obscurities. Rhetoric. -- Samuel Beckett
Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill. -- Richard Whately
First, in your sermons, use your logic, and then your rhetoric; Rhetoric without logic, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with fine expressions when they understand not reason. -- John Selden
I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled. -- Samuel Johnson
There is a truth and beauty in rhetoric; but it oftener serves ill turns than good ones. -- William Penn
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric. -- Thomas Sowell
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. -- Adolf Hitler
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. -- Francis Bacon
Even Stalin proclaimed his love for democracy. We do not learn about the nature of systems of power by listening to their rhetoric. -- Noam Chomsky
We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric. -- Anna Deavere Smith
I have never allowed anti-Russian rhetoric in Ukrainian policy toward such a strategic partner like Russia. This is the first point. I never went against the interests of the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people. -- Viktor Yanukovych
Our government has made a number of promises to the men and women who served in our nation's armed forces. Sadly, these promises of health care, education and other benefits have existed more in rhetoric than in reality. -- Allen Boyd
Like my colleagues, I did about 10 to 15 town hall meetings on this issue; and what I found is people came with a sincere interest to learn, a sincere interest to cut through the rhetoric and understand how this Medicare bill impacts them in their daily lives. -- Chris Chocola
Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. -- Edwin H Friedman
We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see. -- Tom Stoppard
The purpose of formulating [a] conflict as a game is not that of resolving the conflict by 'solving the game.' It is that of displaying the structure of the conflict and thereby exposing features of it that may be concealed by rhetoric. In particular, appreciation of the peculiar structure of some of the so-called mixed-motive conflicts represented nonzero-sum games may change the conflicting parties' perception of their situation. -- Anatol Rapoport
Political rhetoric leads only to confusion. -- Tariq Ramadan
What we all want is public safety. We don't want rhetoric that's framed through ideology. -- Kamala Harris
There comes a time when what is needed is not just rhetoric, but boots on the ground. -- Baldwin Spencer
Promises to get beyond partisanship are the most perfunctory sort of campaign rhetoric, almost as empty as the partisanship itself. -- Thomas Frank
We've advanced in the construction of a true free-trade area across South America... What's needed now is less rhetoric and more action. -- Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong. -- Russell Baker
When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes. -- Christopher Lasch
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. -- Samantha Power
Get into the habit of imagining an alternate scenario. By posing such 'imagine if' questions... we can distance ourselves from the frames, cues, anchors and rhetoric that might be affecting us. -- Noreena Hertz
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That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen. -- Michael Harrington
Being Muslim has become synonymous with pointed questions, with tension and mistrust, even with conflict. It has become a global phenomenon with profound consequences for inter-communal relations, political rhetoric and policies at the local, regional, national and international level. -- Tariq Ramadan
When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy. -- John F. Kerry
The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning. -- Aristotle
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. -- Chuck Palahniuk
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. -- Dan Chaon
In America right now, we use words like 'smart' to talk about bombs. American rhetoric is grounded in ideas of capital-G Good, capital-E Evil, and it's very clear who is on which side. But in a book you can do just the opposite. You can use all lower-case words. -- Jonathan Safran Foer
When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born. -- Charles Krauthammer
It is up to the public to stop attending these theatrical, and aquatic shows, and circuses with wild animals. The rhetoric about how the animals are happy and well cared for are lies. Don't be swayed by them. The money behind these shows is huge; there is nothing good about them. -- Tippi Hedren
Vision is not political rhetoric. -- Jean Chretien
Sometimes "Yes" is rhetoric enough. -- Mason Cooley
Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.". -- Thomas Sowell
I got my degree in rhetoric. -- Alex Borstein
Narrative living is the beginning of rhetoric. -- N.D. Wilson
Today violence is the rhetoric of the period. -- Jose Ortega y Gasset
rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination. -- William Butler Yeats
The rhetoric is the first step, it coarsens attitudes -- Amy Waldman
We are looking for bipartisan solutions not partisan rhetoric. -- Paul Ryan
we have let rhetoric do the job of poetry. -- Cherrie Moraga
The American people must not buy into the Democrat rhetoric. -- Virginia Foxx
Israel deserves America's friendship in reality - not just in rhetoric. -- Eric Cantor
It is not empty rhetoric to talk of the Free World. -- Barbara Amiel
Marco Rubio is a talented young man, but record trumps rhetoric. -- Tom Ridge
Our civilization is shifting from science and technology to rhetoric and litigation. -- Mason Cooley
I'm hearing echoes of Bill Clinton, circa 1996, in President Obama's reelection rhetoric. -- Ron Fournier
I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric. -- Anna Quindlen
We should always measure a government's environmental rhetoric against its environmental record -- John Key
The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Most crises are not resolved through rhetoric. They are resolved through operations. -- Eric Dezenhall
You don't defend national sovereignty with flags, cheap election rhetoric, and advertising campaigns. -- Stephen Harper
More scientific language and less diplomatic rhetoric may make this world even better. -- Wen Jiabao
If rhetoric study was the military, grammar teachers would be the drill sergeants. -- T.K. Naliaka
After ages of bombast, the rhetoric of virtue has become ironic and shy. -- Mason Cooley
Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words. -- Christian Nestell Bovee
but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric. -- Umberto Eco
No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace. -- George W. Bush
False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction. -- Vladimir Lenin
I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric. -- Gerrit Smith
They [unions] used straight Marxist rhetoric [in 1930s] - just the values were changed. -- Noam Chomsky
Poetry is a man arguing with himself; rhetoric is a man arguing with others. -- Robert Hass
If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win. -- Mel Brooks
The American people demand results, not rhetoric, especially when it comes to national security issues. -- J. D. Hayworth
Like a rough orator, that brings more truth Than rhetoric, to make good his accusation. -- Philip Massinger
The voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric. -- Francis Quarles
President Bush has consistently used rhetoric, and that is not convincing given his past record. -- Grace Napolitano
The songs worked as a different kind of rhetoric, one that could reach the fence-sitters. -- Peter Yarrow
I'm really aware of how feminism and feminist rhetoric has been appropriated by the right. -- Jessica Valenti
The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity. -- Richard Whately
Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning. -- Kenneth Burke
Sometime rhetoric was just another way to lie and impress persons, and he knew this -- Haidji
To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears. -- Shirley Chisholm
The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children. -- Audre Lorde
...while cleverness is appropriate to rhetoric, and inventiveness to poetry, truth alone is appropriate to history. -- Procopius of Caesarea
The basic ingredients of psychotherapy are religion, rhetoric, and repression, which are themselves mutually overlapping categories. -- Thomas Szasz
Donald Trump has gone from making absurd comments to being downright dangerous with his bombastic rhetoric. -- Lindsey Graham
The rhetoric of hate and binarisms pervades the politics of the "Third-World" and of the West. -- Nyla Ali Khan
I think Donald Trump is trying to use populist rhetoric to cover up a right-wing agenda. -- Charles Schumer
Enjoy your dear wit and gay rhetoric, That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence. -- John Milton
I think in the heat of emotions, some rhetoric is said that is a little explosive. -- Tommy Thompson
I don't get myself caught up in the rhetoric of any personal comments that are made. -- Roger Goodell
It's time to let science and medicine, not politics and rhetoric, lead us to good, sound policy. -- Eliot Spitzer
If one writes the rules then one can contradict oneself. It's all about rhetoric, about official narratives. -- Kate Zambreno
Americans tend not to distinguish between political rhetoric and real intentions, which can lead to great misunderstanding. -- Hooman Majd
I'm exposing faultlines, dealing especially with rhetoric. Showing that heterosexuality is a disease, or at least its inheritance. -- Kate Zambreno

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