Rhetoric Quotes - Page 9

• Let's make Joe Lieberman accountable for his rhetoric. Not a penny more until he 'clarifies' his position to the satisfaction of our creative freedom.

  Joe Eszterhas

  Creative, Satisfaction, Pennies

  "Eszterhas Takes on Democrats" by Steve Gorman, abcnews.go.com.

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• I am sorry the infernal Divinities, who visit mankind with diseases, and are therefore at perpetual war with Doctors, should have prevented my seeing all you great Men at Soho to-day-Lord! what inventions, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical and pyrotecnical, will be on the wing, bandy'd like a shuttlecock from one to another of your troop of philosophers! while poor I, I by myself I, imprizon'd in a post chaise, am joggled, and jostled, and bump'd, and bruised along the King's high road, to make war upon a pox or a fever!

  Erasmus Darwin

  Kings, Sorry, War

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• None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Love, Heart, Eye

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

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• The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Writing, Thinking, Swans

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

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• If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.

  Alan Greenspan

  Political, Groups, Social

  "Senator Kerry speaks, &c." by Jay Nordlinger, www.nationalreview.com. November 01, 2006.

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• The disease concept of homosexuality as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. ... Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics.

  Thomas Szasz

  Suicide, Addiction, Drug

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement”, p.168, Syracuse University Press

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• The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the "liberal" rhetoric of "equal time." But mistake it not.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Mistake, Enemy, Intolerance

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.276, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Few poets have made a more interesting rhetoric out of just fooling around: turning things upside down, looking at them from under the sofa, considering them (and their observer) curiously enough to make the reader protest, "That were to consider it too curiously.

  Randall Jarrell

  Interesting, Upside Down, Poet

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens" (p. 64), 1969.

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• The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.

  Susan Sontag

  Party, Reality, Self

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.142, Macmillan

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• When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood.

  John Arbuthnot

  Simplicity, Greek, Honor

  George Atherton Aitken, John Arbuthnot (1892). “The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, M.D.: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians”

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• Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic; since both are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to impeach.

  Aristotle

  Men, Way, Logic

  Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (1823). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric”, p.1

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• Of Rhetoric various definitions have been given by different writers; who, however, seem not so much to have disagreed in their conceptions of the nature of the same thing, as to have had different things in view while they employed the same term.

  Richard Whately

  Views, Different, Definitions

  Richard Whately (2010). “Elements of Rhetoric: Comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence and of Persuasion, with Rules for Argumentative Composition and Elocution”, p.1, SIU Press

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• Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill.

  Richard Whately

  Skills, Two, Evil

  Richard Whately (1872). “Elements of Rhetoric: Comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence and of Persuasion, with Rules for Argumentative Composition and Elocution”, p.29

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• No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language; because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar.

  Richard Whately

  Complaining, Use, Logic

  Richard Whately (1867). “Rhetoric”, p.9

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• Like a rough orator, that brings more truth Than rhetoric, to make good his accusation.

  Philip Massinger

  Accusation, Rough, Orators

  Philip Massinger (1830). “The plays of Philip Massinger: adapted for family reading, and the use of young persons, by the omission of objectionable passages”, p.200

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• Ambitious young women today are taught to ignore or suppress every natural instinct, if it conflicts with the feminist agenda posed on them. All literary and artistic works, no matter how great, that document the ambivalence of female sexuality they are trained to dismiss as "misogynous." In other words, their minds are being programmed to secede from their bodies ... there is a huge gap between feminist rhetoric and women's actual sex lives, where feminism is of little help except with a certain stratum of deferential, malleable, white middle-class men.

  Camille Paglia

  Sex, Men, Class

  "No Law in the Arena: a Pagan Theory of Sexuality". Essay in "Vamps and Tramps", a book by Camille Paglia, 1994.

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• There is no gay leader anywhere near the stature of Martin Luther King, because black activism drew on the profound spiritual tradition of the church, to which gay political rhetoric is childishly hostile.

  Camille Paglia

  Spiritual, Kings, Gay

  "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality". Camille Paglia, Vamps and Tramps, 1994.

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• There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Personality, Guy, Majority

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.271, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Elderly, Civilization, Political

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1987). “Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures, Harvard University”, Harcourt

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• The purpose of formulating [a] conflict as a game is not that of resolving the conflict by 'solving the game.' It is that of displaying the structure of the conflict and thereby exposing features of it that may be concealed by rhetoric. In particular, appreciation of the peculiar structure of some of the so-called mixed - motive conflicts represented nonzero-sum games may change the conflicting parties' perception of their situation.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Appreciation, Party, Games

  "Advances in Reversal Theory" by M.J. Apter, ‎J.H. Kerr, ‎S. Murgatroyd, (p. 63-64), 1993.

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• Vision is not political rhetoric.

  Jean Chretien

  Political, Vision, Political Rhetoric

  Jean Chretien (2010). “My Years as Prime Minister”, p.264, Vintage Canada

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• To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.

  Bell Hooks

  Determination, Self, Black

  "Killing Rage: Ending Racism". Book by Bell Hooks, September 15, 1995.

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• Moral capitalism is possible; if not, its strictures are only a kind of misleading vanity, the rhetoric of a secular piety.

  Stephen Young

  Vanity, Moral, Kind

  Stephen Young (2003). “Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good”, p.9, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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• In the unexamined American Dream rhetoric promoting mass higher education in the nation of my youth, the implicit vision was that one day everyone, or at least practically everyone, would be a manager or a professional. We would use the most elitist of all means, scholarship, toward the most egalitarian of ends. We would all become chiefs; hardly anyone would be left a mere Indian.

  William A. Henry III

  Dream, Mean, Vision

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• For a decade Americans have been steeped in the rhetoric of "zero tolerance" and the faith that virtually all problems from drug addiction to lousy teaching can be solved by pouring on the punishment. Even without a Commander in Chief who pledges to rid the world of evildoers, smoke them out of their holes and the like, we would be vulnerable to the temptation to brush aside frustrating complexities and relieve intolerable fear (at least for the moment) by settling on one or more scapegoats to crush. To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake.

  Ellen Willis

  Crush, Zero, Mistake

  "Dreaming of War". "The Nation", October 15, 2001.

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