Quotes and Sayings about Rhetoric
"The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it."
- Mary Astell
(Related: Design, Government, Truth, Lie, Consideration, Light, Rhetoric, Right)
"Using rhetorical questions in speeches is a great way to keep the audience involved. Don't you think those kinds of questions would keep your attention?"
- Bo Bennett
(Related: Attention, Questions)
"I got my degree in rhetoric."
- Alex Borstein
(Related: Rhetoric)
"Our government has made a number of promises to the men and women who served in our nation's armed forces. Sadly, these promises of health care, education and other benefits have existed more in rhetoric than in reality."
- Allen Boyd
(Related: Education, Government, Health, Men, Women, Benefits, Care, Nation, Promises, Reality, Rhetoric)
"Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance."
- Mel Brooks
(Related: People, Chance, Comedy, Rhetoric)
"We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government."
- Dennis Cardoza
(Related: Government, People, Strategy, Conflict, Ending, Iraq, Rhetoric, Stability, Troops)
"Like my colleagues, I did about 10 to 15 town hall meetings on this issue; and what I found is people came with a sincere interest to learn, a sincere interest to cut through the rhetoric and understand how this Medicare bill impacts them in their daily lives."
- Chris Chocola
(Related: People, Interest, Meetings, Rhetoric)
"So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle."
- Howard Dean
(Related: Fact, Rhetoric, Years)
"Democrats were simply hoping to win some political points by getting their outlandish rhetoric published in the newspapers and heard on the talk shows."
- John Doolittle
(Related: Democrats, Newspapers, Rhetoric, Talk)
"The American people must not buy into the Democrat rhetoric."
- Virginia Foxx
(Related: People, American, Rhetoric)
"Rhetoric is cheap, evidence comes more dearly."
- John Fund
(Related: Rhetoric)
"We need to think more about the nature of rhetoric in anthropology. There isn't a body of knowledge and thought to fall back on in this regard."
- Clifford Geertz
(Related: Nature, Thought, Knowledge, Anthropology, Body, Rhetoric)
"Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed."
- Clifford Geertz
(Related: Meaning)
"Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience."
- Paul Getty
(Related: Change, Experience, Observation, Rhetoric)
"On the other side, I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented, is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech."
- Ed Gillespie
(Related: Politics, Democrats, Hate, Rhetoric, Speech, Today)
"Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense."
- Stephen Jay Gould
(Related: Evolution, Nonsense)
"He steps on stage and draws the sword of rhetoric, and when he is through, someone is lying wounded and thousands of others are either angry or consoled."
- Pete Hamill
(Related: Lying, Rhetoric)
"It's very easy to have slogans and rhetoric that people will follow, but eventually the slogans fall away."
- Saad Hariri
(Related: People, Rhetoric, Will)
"That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen."
- Michael Harrington
(Related: Old, Poor, Reform, Rhetoric)
"If Americans want to see results instead of rhetoric, if taxpayers would like solutions instead of sound bites, and hard work instead of horse trading, I suggest you take a short look, and it won't take much longer, at the accomplishments of this Congress."
- Alcee Hastings
(Related: Work, Accomplishments, Americans, Congress, Hard work, Results, Rhetoric, Sound, Want)
"The American people demand results, not rhetoric, especially when it comes to national security issues."
- J. D. Hayworth
(Related: People, American, National security, Results, Rhetoric)
"The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force."
- Adolf Hitler
(Related: Force, Population, Rhetoric)
"When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy."
- John F. Kerry
(Related: Global warming, Hypocrisy, Rhetoric)
"In the coming year, I believe we can make sure America lives up to its legacy as a land of opportunity if the President is willing to back up his rhetoric with substance."
- Ron Kind
(Related: Opportunity, America, Land, President, Rhetoric)
"When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Family, Strength, Values, Feeling, Liberals, Popular, Rhetoric)
"Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Crisis, Effect, Order, Rhetoric)
"Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric. Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside."
- Zell Miller
(Related: People, Deep, Man, Rhetoric, Talk, Vote, Want, Years)
"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
(Related: Idea, Burden, Class, Tax, Party, Rhetoric, Support, Tax cuts)
"President Bush has consistently used rhetoric, and that is not convincing given his past record."
- Grace Napolitano
(Related: Past, President, Rhetoric)
"Now, there are sometimes making a connection between one section and another that sometimes you do want to see the pattern because it helps you to lead into the next thing - it's a rhetorical thing, where you just see how the pattern has to go into the next thing."
- Leo Ornstein
(Related: Connection, Now, Want)
"That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what was for him almost literal fact."
- Walter Pater
(Related: Life, Poetry, Fact, Sense)
"Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men."
- Plato
(Related: Art, Men, Rhetoric)
"So I think it's important to communicate with the people in terms of what the real facts are on these proposals and try to have a discussion and a dialogue that gives people information. I think they're hungry for that rather than just political rhetoric."
- John Podesta
(Related: People, Facts, Information, Rhetoric)
"Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big."
- Theodore Roosevelt
(Related: Action, Nation, Poor, Rhetoric, Talk)
"You may be right that people say: 'You know what, we had Obama. He was inexperienced. The guy had great rhetoric, sounded good, looked good, but has turned out to be an utter disaster. I want someone where I have confidence and credibility that they're up to the job and that I can trust what they tell me.'"
- Karl Rove
(Related: Trust, People, Confidence, Credibility, Disaster, Job, May, Rhetoric, Right, Want)
"We are looking for bipartisan solutions not partisan rhetoric."
- Paul Ryan
(Related: Rhetoric)
"It seems to me we have been in a rhetorical arms race in this country, with each side unwilling to lay down its weapons for fear - usually justified - the other side would beat them to a pulp."
- Pat Sajak
(Related: Fear, Country, Race, Weapons)
"Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth."
- George Santayana
(Related: Religion, Victory, Wealth, Military, Worth)
"Power is the most persuasive rhetoric."
- Friedrich Schiller
(Related: Power, Rhetoric)
"The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?"
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Poetry)
"My colleagues, while it is good that the Nation is finally focused on the critical issue of securing our ports, our rhetoric and our passion about Dubai must be matched by the funding necessary to keep our ports and our citizens safe."
- Allyson Schwartz
(Related: Nation, Passion, Rhetoric)
"So far the changes in the president in his second term have been mainly of a rhetorical nature."
- Brent Scowcroft
(Related: Nature, President)
"The problems seem so easy out there on the stump. Deficits shrink with a rhetorical flourish."
- Hugh Sidey
(Related: Problems)
"We've advanced in the construction of a true free-trade area across South America... What's needed now is less rhetoric and more action."
- Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
(Related: Action, America, Now, Rhetoric)
"I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric."
- Gerrit Smith
(Related: Care, Man, Rhetoric)
"Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric."
- Thomas Sowell
(Related: Blood, Freedom, Rhetoric)
"There comes a time when what is needed is not just rhetoric, but boots on the ground."
- Baldwin Spencer
(Related: Time, Rhetoric)
"When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course."
- Stephen Spender
(Related: Dreams, Son, Mind, Rhetoric, Wishes)
"It's time to let science and medicine, not politics and rhetoric, lead us to good, sound policy."
- Eliot Spitzer
(Related: Politics, Science, Time, Policy, Medicine, Rhetoric, Sound)
"Most people here agree that the rhetoric got overblown on both sides of the Atlantic before the Iraq war, and it was a disagreement among friends over the timing, not the substance, of the Iraq war."
- John S. Tanner
(Related: War, People, Friends, Iraq, Rhetoric)
"I think he could have made most of the trips and gone to most of the fund-raisers if he would have avoided the partisan rhetoric and talked to the country as President in each of these appearances rather than to the narrow partisan audiences."
- Robert Teeter
(Related: Audiences, Country, President, Rhetoric)
"There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric."
- Dick Wolf
(Related: Actors, Rhetoric, Writers)
"I have never allowed anti-Russian rhetoric in Ukrainian policy toward such a strategic partner like Russia. This is the first point. I never went against the interests of the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people."
- Viktor Yanukovych
(Related: People, Policy, First, Rhetoric, Russia, State)
"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."
- William Butler Yeats
(Related: Poetry, Quarrel, Rhetoric)