Rhetoric Quotes - Page 3

• If we get too caught up in the rhetoric of meditation, we will miss the point. The point was to go beyond rhetoric.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Meditation, Missing

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• What I hope we will see from [Donald] Trump very quickly is inclusive rhetoric and rhetoric that brings the temperature down and comforts people so that children feel safe going to school.

  Margaret Hoover

  Children, School, People

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Promises to get beyond partisanship are the most perfunctory sort of campaign rhetoric, almost as empty as the partisanship itself.

  Thomas Frank

  Promise, Campaigns, Empty

  "Bipartisanship Is a Silly Beltway Obsession" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2009.

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• The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want.

  David Foster Wallace

  Jobs, Plato, Smart

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• I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, Limits, Knows

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• We have a lot of rhetoric today about "high rigor" and you often hear terms like that thrown about when discussing the Common Core. But the American education system historically has not embraced intellectual seriousness.

  Dana Goldstein

  Intellectual, Today, Common

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm really aware of how feminism and feminist rhetoric has been appropriated by the right.

  Jessica Valenti

  Feminist, Feminism, Has Beens

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Rhetoric matters, but at the end of the day policy matters more.

  Garry Kasparov

  Policy

  "Garry Kasparov on Russia, chess, and the great gambit of AI". Interview with Alexander Bisley, www.macleans.ca. May 1, 2017.

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• Our mind is dark in some way, and so we use rhetoric as a kind of prop or foil.

  Martha Ronk

  Dark, Mind, Use

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Rhetoric is cheap, evidence comes more dearly.

  John Fund

  Evidence

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• I bless the gods for not letting my education in rhetoric, poetry, and other literary studies come easily to me, and thereby sparing me from an absorbing interest in these subjects.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Study, Bless, Interest

  Marcus Aurelius, C. Scot Hicks, David Hicks (2002). “The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

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• ... the thing that's happening today vis-á-vis computer imaging, vis-á-vis alteration, is that it no longer needs to be based on the real at all. I don't want to get into jargon - let's just say that photography to me no longer pertains to the rhetoric of realism; it pertains more perhaps to the rhetoric of the unreal rather than the real or of course the hyperreal.

  Barbara Kruger

  Photography, Real, Needs

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• If you aren't creeped out by the No Birth Control Left Behind rhetoric of the White House and Planned Parenthood, you aren't listening closely enough. The anesthetic of progressive benevolence always dulls the senses. Wake up.

  Michelle Malkin

  White, House, Listening

  "To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit" by Michelle Malkin, www.realclearpolitics.com. February 10, 2012.

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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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• It's time to let science and medicine, not politics and rhetoric, lead us to good, sound policy.

  Eliot Spitzer

  Medicine, Sound, Politics

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• Today violence is the rhetoric of the period.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Today, Violence, Periods

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Loneliness, Simple

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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

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• The crowning insult [of abortion] is that this ordeal is represented to her as some kind of a privilege.Her sad and onerous duty is garbed in the rhetoric of a civil right.

  Germaine Greer

  Abortion, Privilege, Insult

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• Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.

  Thomas Sowell

  Ideas, People, Liberty

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• Number one, it is absolutely critical that we tone down the rhetoric when it comes to the immigration debate, because there has been an undertone that has been ugly. Oftentimes, it has been directed at the Hispanic community. We have seen hate crimes skyrocket in the wake of the immigration debate as it has been conducted in Washington, and that is unacceptable.

  Barack Obama

  Hate, Numbers, Community

  Democratic Debate in Austin, Tex., www.nytimes.com. February 21, 2008.

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• More non-fringe, non-radical homosexuals emerge into public view every day. As the stereotype of the homosexual as antisocial deviant crumbles, a (political) party or faction that tolerates gay-baiting rhetoric in the name of 'family values' makes 'family values' look more and more like common bigotry.

  Jonathan Rauch

  Party, Gay, Views

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• Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Art, School, Speech

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.203

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• Even talking about change can be threatening to entrenched interests...Careers in the Pentagon, the board room, or the halls of Congress are not advanced by creating the disruptions that go with real change, so there are very few voices willing to speak up for the future and move beyond rhetoric to make serious choices.

  Mac Thornberry

  Military, Real, Moving

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• Tax rates for the wealthy should revert to Clinton-era levels, both because it is necessary for long-term deficit reduction and because fairness dictates it. Moreover, there is no proof that higher marginal rates dissuade investment, all the rhetoric from the Right notwithstanding.

  Eliot Spitzer

  Long, Levels, Eras

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