Rhetoric Quotes

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

  Kenneth Burke

  Persuasion

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• Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

  Plato

  Art, Plato, Philosophical

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• Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

  Thomas Sowell

  Blood, Agony, Cost

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.118, Basic Books

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• Hitler showed the evil that could be done by the art of rhetoric. Churchill showed how it could help to save humanity.

  Boris Johnson

  Art, Evil, Humanity

  Source: www.goodreads.com

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• Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

  Aristotle

  Mean, May, Persuasion

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Rhetoric”, p.25, Aeterna Press

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• Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.

  Jeremy Collier

  Order, Argument, Reason

  Jeremy Collier, Thomas Lathbury (1852). “An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain: Chiefly of England: from the First Planting of Christianity, to the End of the Reign of King Charles the Second ; with a Brief Account of the Affairs of Religion in Ireland Collected from the Best Ancient Historians, Councils, and Records”, p.440

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• 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

  Political, Politics, Action

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.36, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.

  Adolf Hitler

  Fear, Military, Historical

  Adolf Hitler, General Press (2016). “Mein Kampf: (My Struggle)”, p.95, GENERAL PRESS

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• The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.

  Immanuel Kant

  Art, Play, Imagination

  Immanuel Kant (2013). “Kant's Critiques”, p.691, Simon and Schuster

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• There is a truth and beauty in rhetoric; but it oftener serves ill turns than good ones.

  William Penn

  Truth And Beauty, Ill, Turns

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.35, Courier Corporation

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• 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

  Lying, Passion, Light

  Mary Astell (2002). “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies”, p.190, Broadview Press

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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

  People, Doe, Comedy

  "Springtime of Brooks' autumn years" by John Ezard, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2004.

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• Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

  Francis Bacon

  Wise, Witty, Philosophy

  'Essays' (1625) 'Of Studies'

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• Rhetoric is not important. Actions are.

  Nelson Mandela

  Education, Laughter, Inspiration

  Nelson Mandela (1998). “In the Words of Nelson Mandela”, Birch Lane Press

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• Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

  Aristotle

  Character, Mind, Three

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• 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

  Together, Steps, Tools

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• Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Power, Persuasive

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• Sometimes "Yes" is rhetoric enough.

  Mason Cooley

  Sometimes, Enough, Yeah

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• 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

  Listening, Democracy, His Love

  "Kurds within the Arab spring and the Middle East Crisis". Interview with Haidar Nasih, chomsky.info. December 30, 2012.

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• Rhetoric never won a revolution yet.

  Shirley Chisholm

  Revolution

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Poetry, Argument, Quarrels

  "Anima Hominis" (1924)

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• Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Action, Poor, Substitutes

  Theodore Roosevelt (2015). “Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century”, p.36, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• 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

  Art, Long, Matter

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Rhetoric”, p.28, Aeterna Press

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• And do so, love, yet when they have devised
  What strainèd touches rhetoric can lend,
  Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized
  In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;
  And their gross painting might be better used
  Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.

  William Shakespeare

  Blood, Might, Needs

  William Shakespeare (2015). “The Sonnets and Narrative Poems”, p.101, Everyman's Library

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• Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are in their nature stronger than their opposites; so that if decisions be made, not in conformity to the rule of propriety, it must have been that they have been got the better of through fault of the advocates themselves: and this is deserving reprehension.

  Aristotle

  Opposites, Justice, Decision

  Aristotle (1890). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric, Literally Tr. with Hobbes' Analysis, Examination Questions and an Appendix Containing the Greek Definitions: Also, The Poetic of Aristotle, Literally Tr., with a Selection of Notes, an Analysis, and Questions”

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