Rhetoric Quotes - Page 8

• National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Strong, Usa, Evil

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• Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Love, Heart, Sweetest

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.34

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• Modern liberalism, for most liberals is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow.

  James Burnham

  Emotional, Glowing, Color

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• RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms - the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming.

  Ben Marcus

  Wise, Art, Pain

  Ben Marcus (2013). “The Age of Wire and String”, p.92, Granta Books

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• We had a sense of importance that would have led us to risk our lives for our rhetoric.

  Jerry Rubin

  Risk, Importance, Our Lives

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• The Democratic Party opposes tax cuts but it cannot say so publicly. Thus, it is forced to support the idea of lowering the tax burden but using class warfare rhetoric to dispute the allocation of the relief.

  Dick Morris

  Party, Cutting, Class

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• Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.

  Camille Paglia

  Children, Pain, Men

  "Vamps and Tramps". Book by Camille Paglia, 1994.

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• The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.

  Conor Cruise O'Brien

  Powerful, People, Agents

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• No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

  George W. Bush

  Peace, War, Election

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• My message of common-sense solutions is resonating with people. People around the country are starting to know who I am and starting to identify me with solutions, not rhetoric.

  Herman Cain

  Country, Who I Am, People

  "Herman Cain's surprising rise to GOP front-runner" by Sandhya Somashekhar, www.washingtonpost.com. October 6, 2011.

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• Within the model minority rhetoric, Asian Americans are represented as “good” minorities and African Americans are represented as “bad” minorities. Here, the achievements of Asian Americans are used to discipline African Americans. As model minorities, Asian Americans achieved the status of “honorary Whites”. Again it is important to point out that the honorary whiteness of Asian Americans was granted at the expense of Blacks. It is also significant that as “honorary Whites,” Asian Americans do not have the actual privileges associated with “real” whiteness.

  Jennifer Lee

  Real, Discipline, Achievement

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• Americans aren't buying the hate these anti-LGBT extremists are selling, so they've been forced to take their take their dangerous rhetoric abroad. These radicals are now travelling from country to country advocating for the persecution of LGBT people under the guise that they're saving children.

  Chad Griffin

  Country, Children, Hate

  "US conservative activists want more countries to emulate Russia's anti-gay laws", www.foxnews.com. February 21, 2014.

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• 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

  Smart, Book, Opposites

  "Something happened" by Suzie Mackenzie, www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2005.

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• The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.

  Chinua Achebe

  Space, Long, People

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• I'm hearing echoes of Bill Clinton, circa 1996, in President Obama's reelection rhetoric.

  Ron Fournier

  Echoes, President, Reelection

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• It is astonishing how articulate one can become when alone and raving at a radio. Arguments and counter arguments, rhetoric and bombast flow from one's lips like scurf from the hair of a bank manager.

  Stephen Fry

  Hair, Radio, Flow

  Stephen Fry (2010). “Paperweight”, p.62, Random House

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• Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reverse-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word "silence"...In one another we will never be lacking.

  Helene Cixous

  Writing, Cutting, Class

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• Howard Altmann has found a way to make language transform itself. If the elusive moment between I and Thou could speak, it might be one of his quietly amazing lines-'you ask the silence to invert itself / like a gymnast in the dark . . . ' Without a trace of rhetoric, In This House reminds us of the power of poetry: to show us how to live in a world in which we are strangers. It's a thrill to come close to such an original and deeply realized art.

  Dennis Nurkse

  Art, Dark, Silence

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• It is truly a triumph of rhetoric over reality when people can believe that going into politics is 'public service,' but that producing food, shelter, transportation, or medical care is not.

  Thomas Sowell

  Believe, Reality, People

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• If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

  Mel Brooks

  Winning, Soapbox, Dictator

  "Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures" by George Heymont, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 4, 2011.

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• Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric. Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.

  Zell Miller

  Men, Thinking, Years

  2004 Republican National Convention Address, delivered 1 September 2004, Madison Square Garden, New York

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• I believe strongly that we need to get beyond rhetoric, beyond industry and environmentalists fighting with each other, and seriously solve problems.

  Gale Norton

  Believe, Fighting, Needs

  "The Complete Gale Norton Interview". Interview with Alex Pasquariello, www.hcn.org. May 24, 2004.

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• Politics is still crucially important. Our choices are vital, and we've got to make them and not just say, 'Oh they're all the same.' They are all the same in certain ways, alas - a political animal is such an animal.

  Dennis Potter

  Animal, Important Choices, Political

  "An interview with Dennis Potter: an edited transcript of Melvyn Bragg's interview with Dennis Potter, broadcast on the 5th of April 1994".

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• Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. In the liberal welfare state, one develops an entitlement mentality. And the rhetoric of liberalism - labeling each new entitlement a 'right reinforces this sense of entitlement.' -

  Dennis Prager

  Character, Erosion, Guarantees

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• 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

  Art, Practice, Design

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