Rhetorical Quotes - Page 4

• Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety?

  George Eliot

  Men, Average, Careers

  George Eliot (1883). “The Essays of George Eliot”, p.34, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bill Knott's poems are . . . rhetorical fluff . . . and fake.

  Ron Loewinsohn

  Fake, Bills, Fluff

  4 Copy quote

• In late modernity we grow more and more accustomed to politicians and public figures who are indebted to their appetites for their "values," to their intellectual sloth for their "principles," to their rhetorical cleverness for their "conscience," and to their regimented conformism for their "philosophy."

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Intellectual, Sloth

  4 Copy quote

• Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.

  Alexander Cockburn

  Running, Couple, Party

  4 Copy quote

• There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

  Herbert Spencer

  Clear Head, Law, Practice

  Herbert Spencer (1873). “Philosophy of Style: An Essay”, p.9

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I come from a place that likes grandeur; it likes large gestures; it is not inhibited by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a society of physical performance; it is a society of style.

  Derek Walcott

  Style, Gestures, Likes

  "Interview with Ed Hirsch". "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series", 1986.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.

  William Safire

  Empathy, President, Politician

  1990 LanguageMaven Strikes Again.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Philosophy, Silly, Law

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.310, Harvard University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I’m not a gun owner and, as I think as is the case for the more than half the people in the country who also aren’t gun owners, that means that for me guns are alien. In the current rhetorical climate people seem not to want to say: I think guns are kind of scary and don’t want to be around them.

  Josh Marshall

  Country, Mean, Gun

  4 Copy quote

• Godwin's law states that the longer any online debate goes on, the likelier it is that someone will play the Nazi card. It's the rhetorical equivalent of going nuclear and stupid at the same time.

  John Avlon

  Stupid, Law, Play

  John Avlon (2014). “Wingnuts: Extremism in the Age of Obama”, p.59, Beast Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem - new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.

  Thornton Wilder

  Problem, Revival, Persuasive

  5 Copy quote

• The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Religious, Errors, Atheism

  "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays". Book by Thomas Babington Macaulay Baron Macaulay, p. 60, 1843.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• To claim "humanitarian motives" when the motive is envy and its supposed appeasement, is a favorite rhetorical device of politicians today, and has been for at least a hundred and fifty years.

  Helmut Schoeck

  Years, Envy, Atheism

  8 Copy quote

• O love-why can't you leave me alone? Which is a rhetorical question meaning: for heaven's sake, don't.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Heaven, Leave Me Alone

  5 Copy quote

• When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well ladies and gentleman, I'd follow the example of their nominee; don't inhale.

  Ronald Reagan

  Gentleman, Example, Democrat

  5 Copy quote

• Whoop-de-do," said Ram. "What?" "I'm celebrating." "Was that irony or loss of mental function?" asked the expendable. "Was that a rhetorical questions, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?" "I have no confidence in you, Ram," said the expendable. "Well, thanks." "You're welcome.

  Orson Scott Card

  Thank You, Loss, Rams

  Orson Scott Card (2011). “Pathfinder”, p.64, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.

  Walter Isaacson

  Reality, Hands, Style

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Steve Jobs”, p.118, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'd finished the first two [books] and they were going to to be published, and [editor] said, "We need you to write a summary that will drive people to these books." And it took forever. I couldn't think of a thing to say. I looked at the back of other children's books that were full of giddy praise and corny rhetorical questions, you know, "Will she have a better time at summer camp than she thinks?" "How will she escape from the troll's dungeon?" All these terrible, terrible summaries of books, and I just couldn't.

  Daniel Handler

  Summer, Children, Book

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like to use research to enlarge the poem. And sometimes a rhetorical or syntactical gesture stitches the poem along.

  Alison Hawthorne Deming

  Use, Stitches, Research

  Interview with Simmons B. Buntin, www.terrain.org. September 22, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In any piece of rhetorical discourse, one rhetorical term overcomes another rhetorical term only by being nearer to the term which stands ultimate. There is some ground for calling a rhetorical education necessarily aristocratic education in that the rhetorician has to deal with an aristocracy of notions.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Overcoming, Aristocracy, Calling

  Richard M. Weaver (2016). “The Ethics of Rhetoric”, p.23, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art has always been this--pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric--whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Reality, Literature

  Samuel Beckett, Ruby Cohn (1983). “Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment”, Riverrun Pr

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Precisely because Marx was convinced that the cause of the proletariat was of decisive importance for the whole future of mankind, he wanted to create for that cause not a flimsy platform of rhetorical invective or wishful thinking, but the rock-like foundation of scientific truth.

  Ernest Mandel

  Thinking, Rocks, Foundation

  9 Copy quote

• I think that when you reveal things that are going to cause pain, you have rhetorical resources in poetry.

  Vijay Seshadri

  Pain, Thinking, Causes

  "You Are Vijay Seshadri". Interview with Laura Standley, logger.believermag.com. June 10, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity; not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity wherein dwelleth the Divine.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Real, Years, Two

  7 Copy quote

• Obama's rhetorical overtures to democracy, it turned out, were just a decoy to conceal his unwavering determination to govern from the far left.

  Sean Hannity

  Determination, Democracy, Unwavering

  Sean Hannity (2010). “Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda”, p.6, Harper Collins

  5 Copy quote

  Show source