Rhetoric Quotes - Page 9

• Throughout the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first, the United States repeatedly used its military power, and that of its clandestine services, to overthrow governments that refused to protect American interests. Each time, it cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national security and liberation. In most cases, however, it acted mainly for economic reasons-specifically to establish, promote and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference.

  Stephen Kinzer

  Military, Government, World

  Stephen Kinzer (2007). “Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq”, p.3, Macmillan

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• Obama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.

  Judith Butler

  Rights, Links, Way

  "Weapon of the Strong: Conversations on US State Terrorism". Book by Jon Bailes and Cihan Aksan, November 27, 2012.

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• Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market - contrary to rhetoric.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Government, Affordable Housing

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.30, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Media, Practice

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• Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on into micro-managing automobile companies and medical care. They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence.

  Thomas Sowell

  Taken, Years, Political

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• We have to be the people who stand up and say look, vigilance is good and prudence is good. But a kind of irrational fear that leads itself to demagogic rhetoric is something that we have to say no - no, we're not going to go there.

  Russell D. Moore

  People, Looks, Irrational Fear

  "Round-Table On Refugees: How People Of Faith Are Navigating The Crisis". "All Things Considered" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. November 21, 2015.

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• Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Ideas, Political

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• Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Numbers, Discipline

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• The songs worked as a different kind of rhetoric, one that could reach the fence-sitters.

  Peter Yarrow

  Song, Different, Kind

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• When Donald Trump campaigned for president, he told the American people that he would be a different type of Republican, that he would take on the political and economic establishment, that he would stand up for working people, that he understood the pain that families all across this country were experiencing. Well, sadly, it was just cheap and dishonest campaign rhetoric that was meant to get votes, nothing more than that.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Country, Pain, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I am learning by the week, but my poesy is still not my own. New rhyme, new me me me in words. I am not all this carven rhetoric.

  Allen Ginsberg

  New Me, Week, Rhyme

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• Someone recently pointed out how much Barack Obama's style and strategies resemble those of Latin American charismatic despots - the takeover of industries by demagogues who never ran a business, the rousing rhetoric of resentment addressed to the masses and the personal cult of the leader promoted by the media. But do we want to become the world's largest banana republic?

  Thomas Sowell

  Latin, Media, Leader

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.100, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• North Korea is a direct threat to the United States. They have been very clear in their rhetoric we don't have to wait until they have an intercont- intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon on it to say that now it's manifested completely.

  James Mattis

  Waiting, Threat, North Korea

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• When Donald Trump was first elected, there was a lot of fear of a trade war. They listened to Trump's rhetoric on the campaign. Oh, we're going to put a 45 percent tariff on China, a 35 percent tariff on Mexico. We haven't seen any of that.

  Donald Trump

  War, Trade

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think the people marching in L.A., on college campuses around the country, aren't marching simply because Trump was a Republican president and he got elected. They're marching because the Trump campaign is very much centered on demagogic rhetoric against immigrants, against Muslim-Americans, against black protest, against sort of America's non-white community.

  John S. Dickerson

  Country, College, Thinking

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• I try to look at it like an angry optimist. In other words, I'm not happy with the state of affairs that we have. The rise of nationalism under the guise of patriotism is so effed up, and underneath this banner of "patriotism" is the worst of nationalist rhetoric: racism, xenophobia, sexism, pitting communities against each other, implicitly inciting race wars and stuff like that. So that's the angry part of it, but I'm incredibly optimistic about the potential to redefine what it means to be a "patriotic American" .

  Hasan Minhaj

  War, Optimistic, Mean

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• I don't think the rhetoric toward President Trump from media sources or media commentators is any worse than what Franklin Roosevelt got from a conservative press in another era. And Roosevelt was, you know, not as blunt as Trump about the press, but, you know, there was an ideological press back then, when we had multiple newspapers in town.

  Tom Rosenstiel

  Thinking, President, Conservative

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• We've seen hate groups rise across the country. But we've also seen an increase in the average person, who looks like your doctor, your lawyer, your mechanic, your dentists, starting to say the same types of rhetoric. Sometimes it's a little bit more polished, something the average person who has underlying racism can attach himself to. I'm less concerned about skinheads and Klansmen now than the average person who feels emboldened, and the militia and sovereign-citizen groups who are certainly tied to white supremacist organizations, training in paramilitary camps.

  Christian Picciolini

  Country, Hate, Racism

  Source: chicagoist.com

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• There are also people that still choose to support racist rhetoric because they feel white dominance in America is slipping through their fingers. To them, "diversity" is a codeword for white genocide. They claim that their "homelands" are being overrun by minorities and are desperate for solutions that ensure their "white survival." This fear, of course, is irrational and solely based on a loss of white power and control.

  Christian Picciolini

  Loss, People, Diversity

  Source: chicagoist.com

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• I definitely don't agree with that sort of rhetoric from the United States - this idea that all the major conflicts of our age need to be solved militarily.

  Bernard-Henri Levy

  Ideas, Age, United States

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth - that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric.

  Michael Crichton

  Party, Differences, People

  Remarks to the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, www.cs.cmu.edu. September 15, 2003.

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• Enjoy your dear wit and gay rhetoric, That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence.

  John Milton

  Gay, Taught, Fence

  John Milton (2007). “Complete Shorter Poems”, p.220, Pearson Education

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• I think Robert F. Kennedy really, finally, cared; he realized that all of the rhetoric had to be put down into some form of action. That's perhaps the reason they killed him. They don't care what you say, you can say as much as you want to, provided you don't do anything. If you start to do something and your shuffling raises too much dust, they will disestablish you. That's what happened to Martin Luther King.

  Marlon Brando

  Kings, Thinking, Dust

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• Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric.

  Dana Spiotta

  People, Simplicity, Ease

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• If something's public then it seems like the important thing is the person in that public. And the notion of rhetoric. I went to Jesuit schools that focused on first there's grammar, then there's rhetoric, and rhetoric's usually seen as a kind of degraded method, because you're trying to persuade.

  Vito Acconci

  School, Important, Trying

  Interview with Shelley Jackson, believermag.com. January 1, 2007.

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