Quotes about Rhetoric

"Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric;
out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry."

~William Butler Yeats~

Philosophy exists in profoundest opposition to rhetoric, which is speaking for the sake of producing or controlling some effect in others' perceptions.  Philosophy is about the caustic or cauterizing effect of the truth, not the currying of sensibilities.

You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.  I see too much parroting, to much regurgitation of half-digested radical rhetoric…

I’m arguably the least real of all my characters, a state of affairs for which I make no apologies, being, indeed, altogether proud of the fact. I am, as it were, the created creating--a paradox, for all its rhetorical trappings, at the beating heart of our shared human journey, and one I invite you to struggle with just as I have while, day in and day out, word by word and line by line, constructing a fictitious autobiography for myself in these pages.

Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.

The basic ingredients of psychotherapy are religion, rhetoric, and repression, which are themselves mutually overlapping categories.

'T was the saying of an ancient sage (Gorgias Leontinus, apud Aristotle's "Rhetoric," lib. iii. c. 18), that humour was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false wit.

For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope.

National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things.

I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

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.

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

The so-called "missile gap", a mainstay of Cold War rhetoric, was cited by the Kennedy campaign to justify its proposed increases in defense spending. Once in power, the Kennedy Administration proved less eager to publicize the embarrassing truth, that the United States had always been in a position of nuclear superiority. In short, the deterrent ratio might well shift to the Soviets so heavily, during the years of the [missile] gap, as to open to them a shortcut to world domination. . . . In the years of the gap, the Soviets may be expected to use their superior striking ability to achieve their objective in many ways which may not require launching an actual attack. Their missile power will be the shield from behind which they will slowly, but surely, advance. . . .

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

MENDACIOUS, adj. Addicted to rhetoric.

The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.