Kenneth Burke Quotes

• Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.

  Kenneth Burke

  Persuasion, Rhetoric

  76 Copy quote

• You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his

  Kenneth Burke

  Attitude, Men, Order

  Kenneth Burke (1969). “A Rhetoric of Motives”, p.55, Univ of California Press

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• A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.

  Kenneth Burke

  Way, Seeing

  1936 Permanence and Change.

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• 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

  Mean, Essentials, Use

  Kenneth Burke (1969). “A Rhetoric of Motives”, p.43, Univ of California Press

  63 Copy quote

• Stories are equipment for living.

  Kenneth Burke

  Stories, Equipment

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• We not only interpret the character of events... we may also interpret our interpretations.

  Kenneth Burke

  Character, Events, May

  Kenneth Burke (1984). “Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose”, p.6, Univ of California Press

  67 Copy quote

• Words are like planets, each with its own gravitational pull.

  Kenneth Burke

  Language, Planets

  45 Copy quote

• Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality.

  Kenneth Burke

  Reflection, Reality, Men

  Kenneth Burke, Joseph R. Gusfield (1989). “On Symbols and Society”, p.158, University of Chicago Press

  66 Copy quote

• Man is/the symbol-using (symbol making, symbol-misusing) animal/inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)/separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making/goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order)/and rotten with perfection.

  Kenneth Burke

  Animal, Men, Order

  Kenneth Burke (1973). “Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature and Method”, p.16, Univ of California Press

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• The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.

  Kenneth Burke

  Attitude, Men, Political

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• The progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken.

  Kenneth Burke

  People, Progress, Enlightenment

  47 Copy quote

• If decisions were a choice between alternatives, decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives.

  Kenneth Burke

  Choices, Decision, Alternatives

  Kenneth Burke (2005). “Here & Elsewhere: The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Burke”, p.146, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Language does our thinking for us.

  Kenneth Burke

  Thinking, Doe, Language

  Kenneth Burke, Herbert W. Simons (1989). “The Legacy of Kenneth Burke”, p.17, Univ of Wisconsin Press

  18 Copy quote

• The universe would appear to be something like a piece of cheese; it can be sliced in an infinite number of ways- and when one has chosen his own pattern of slicing, he finds that other men's cuts fall at the wrong places.

  Kenneth Burke

  Fall, Cutting, Men

  Kenneth Burke (1984). “Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose”, p.103, Univ of California Press

  35 Copy quote

• The use of words by human agents to form attitudes or induce actionsin other human agents.

  Kenneth Burke

  Attitude, Use, Agents

  28 Copy quote

• Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality.

  Kenneth Burke

  Reflection, Reality, Given

  Kenneth Burke (1966). “Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method”, p.45, Univ of California Press

  27 Copy quote

• Dignity belongs to the conquered.

  Kenneth Burke

  Dignity

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• For no continuity of social act is possible without a corresponding social status and the many different kinds of act required in an industrial state, with its high degree of specialization, make for corresponding classification of status.

  Kenneth Burke

  Degrees, Different, Kind

  Kenneth Burke (1962). “A grammar of motives, and A rhetoric of motives”

  21 Copy quote

• Man is rotten with perfection.

  Kenneth Burke

  Men, Perfection, Rotten

  23 Copy quote

• Creation implies authority in the sense of originator.

  Kenneth Burke

  Creation, Authority

  Kenneth Burke (1970). “The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology”, p.174, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

• Our purpose is simply to ask how theological principles can be shown to have usable secular analogues that throw light upon the nature of language.

  Kenneth Burke

  Light, Principles, Purpose

  Kenneth Burke (1970). “The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology”, p.2, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

• Creation implies authority in the sense of originator. The possibility of a 'Fall' is implied in a Covenant insofar as the idea of a Covenant implies the possibility of its being violated.

  Kenneth Burke

  Fall, Ideas, Covenant

  Kenneth Burke (1970). “The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology”, p.174, Univ of California Press

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