282 Quotes About Rhetoric

Talent for oratory can simulate the need for action and even thought.

[It is not] the poet's business to use verse as an advanced form of rhetoric, nor to give to political statements the aura of eternal truth.

He likes to use his wit and verbal finesse to confuse others and win arguments. Although he can argue successfully that white is black and straight is crooked, you walk away with the feeling that he's won the argument not because he is correct but because you can't outwit him.

An ancient writer says of Homer that he touched nothing without somehow honoring and glorifying it.

My claim is to live to the full contradiction of my time

Tell someone to do something, and you change their life–for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.

He did what good lawyers always do. He shifted his argument in the direction his audience was already going.

Reader, if thou intendest to go any farther, I would entreat thee to stay here a little. If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again, - thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell!

They were interchangeable tools, and the catchy phrases continued without abatement.