282 Quotes About Rhetoric

I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.

There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.

One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.

What makes a man a 'sophist' is not his faculty, but his moral purpose. (1355b 17)

RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms - the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming.

The words of the Greeks are born on their lips, but those of the Romans in their hearts.

whoever approaches his goal dances

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.