Rhetoric Quotes - Page 2

• 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

  Flower, Amusement, Corn

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• If one writes the rules then one can contradict oneself. It's all about rhetoric, about official narratives.

  Kate Zambreno

  Writing, Narrative, Oneself

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In my opinion, the unjust man whose tongue is full of glozing rhetoric, merits the heaviest punishment; vaunting that he can with his tongue gloze over injustice, he dares to act wickedly, yet he is not over-wise.

  Euripides

  Wise, Men, Merit

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• It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Faults, Facts, States

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Self-Reliance, the Over-Soul, and Other Essays”, p.17, Coyote Canyon Press

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• 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

  Pieces, Glorious, Declaration

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• Poetry is a man arguing with himself; rhetoric is a man arguing with others.

  Robert Hass

  Men, Arguing, Poetry Is

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.

  Samuel Johnson

  Thinking, People, Wave

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• Rhetoric can be razor sharp, and just as one needs to take some comments seriously, others should not be.

  Alexander Stubb

  Needs, Razors, Should

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• 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

  Order, Moral, Birth

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• Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.".

  Thomas Sowell

  Envy, Justice, Social

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “The Thomas Sowell Reader”, p.399, Basic Books

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• I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just now saying, and about the just and unjust.

  Gorgias

  Art, Law, Answers

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• People want guidance, not rhetoric. They need to know what the plan of action is, and how it will be implemented. They want to be given responsibility to help solve the problem and authority to act on it.

  Howard Schultz

  Responsibility, People, Needs

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• Our civilization is shifting from science and technology to rhetoric and litigation.

  Mason Cooley

  Technology, Law, Civilization

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• There is practically no area of business where the difference between rhetoric and actuality is greater than in the handling of people.

  John Harvey-Jones

  Differences, People, Areas

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• 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

  Reality, Men, Numbers

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• 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

  School, Blood, Giving

  "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead". www.imdb.com. 1990.

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• No one is born with good character; it's not a hereditary trait. And it isn't determined by a single noble act. Character is established by conscientious adherence to moral values, not by lofty rhetoric or good intentions.

  Michael Josephson

  Character, Noble, Adherence

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• 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

  Cutting, Issues, Impact

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• 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

  Russia, People, Firsts

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• I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Moral, Theology

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2730, Delphi Classics

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• Democratic politicians, liberal activists and liberal news outlets routinely deploy incendiary rhetoric and wicked accusations to marginalize Republicans.

  Gary Bauer

  Wicked, News, Republican

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• Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible.

  Aristotle

  Opposites, Decision, Employment

  Aristotle, John Henry Freese (1926). “Aristotle: the art of rhetoric”, Loeb Classical Library

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• The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

  Richard Whately

  Style, Firsts, Composition

  Richard Whately (1858). “Elements of Rhetoric: Comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence and of Persuasion : with Rules for Argumentative Composition and Elocution”, p.300

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• What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspiration, Heart, Yield

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.88, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You don't defend national sovereignty with flags, cheap election rhetoric, and advertising campaigns.

  Stephen Harper

  Campaigns, Flags, Election

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