Rhetoric Quotes - Page 4

• The voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric.

  Francis Quarles

  Humility, Voice, Silence

  Francis Quarles (1844). “Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles”, p.91

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• How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?

  Thomas Sowell

  Long, People, Heaven

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• What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Interesting, Secret, Important

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The Cat's Table”, p.81, Random House

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• False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Freedom, Political, Democracy

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• A grain of real knowledge, of genuine controllable conviction, will outweigh a bushel of adroitness; and to produce persuasion there is one golden principle of rhetoric not put down in the books-to understand what you are talking about.

  John Robert Seeley

  Real, Book, Knowledge

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies - the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding.

  James Hillman

  Hands, White, Understanding

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• And all these questions I ask myself. It is not in a spirit of curiosity. I cannot be silent. About myself I need know nothing. Here all is clear. No, all is not clear. But the discourse must go on. So one invents obscurities. Rhetoric.

  Samuel Beckett

  Knowledge, Thinking, Curiosity

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.288, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• From this point of view, science - the real game in town - is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one's manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power.

  Donna J. Haraway

  Real, Views, Games

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• First, in your sermons, use your logic, and then your rhetoric; Rhetoric without logic, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with fine expressions when they understand not reason.

  John Selden

  Taken, Expression, Roots

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• This too is a jihad. Yet we Americans find ourselves in the dangerous position of going to war not against a state but against a phantom. The jihad we have embarked upon is targeting an elusive and protean enemy. The battle we have begun is never-ending. But it may be too late to wind back the heady rhetoric. We have embarked on a campaign as quixotic as the one mounted to destroy us.

  Chris Hedges

  War, Wind, Enemy

  Chris Hedges (2014). “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, p.4, PublicAffairs

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• You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

  Paul Krugman

  Hate, Past, Violent Acts

  "Assassination Attempt In Arizona". krugman.blogs.nytimes.com. January 8, 2011.

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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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