Life is a planetary level phenomenon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable—the rhetoric of the...

How Horrid” has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror–puberty, public disgrace–then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.

Their rhetoric is that perhaps God’s blessing has been removed and we can’t expect to be protected.

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.

There seems to be a disconnect between the rhetoric in Washington about what this is all about and what we hear here.

History never repeats itself, historians do.

[Responding to the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce’s question whether he traced his descent from an ape on his mother’s or his father’s side]A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape...

…anyone still attempting to argue that Ebonics is a problem for black students or that it is somehow connected to a lack of intelligence or lack of desire to achieve is about as useful as...

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...

Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.

There is a big chasm between rhetoric and the budget process.

Euro-zone data flow this morning will encourage further hawkish rhetoric from the ECB.

They want the rhetoric to end and they want to concentrate on what they do best.

TOBY: The world can move or not by changing some words.

Rhetoric is cheap, evidence comes more dearly.

whoever approaches his goal dances

Let’s take the time to clear the air of loathsome partisan rhetoric.

Leadership meant knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world.

He was a stylist, not a thinker. He spent time trying to say things in as complicated a way as possible.

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...

… there is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment;...

The rhetoric is much different this time – this time they’re really out to get each other.

Another Mexican American in another class, approaches Victor after class, carrying his copy of Fahrenheit 451, required reading for the course. The student doesn’t understand the reference to a salon. Victor explains that this is...

really sick rhetoric. It should be repudiated by anyone who hears it.

So far all we’ve had is rhetoric.

Again, it is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when...

When I say “The good man gave his good dog a good meal,” I use “good” analogically, for there is at the same time a similarity and a difference between a good man, a good...

I just stepped in shit, and now I’ve got political rhetoric all over my shoes.

Lyndon Johnson knew how to make the most of such enthusiasm and how to play on it and intensify it. He wanted his audience to become involved. He wanted their hands up in the air....

At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they’re returning. It is in the...

When (an advocate) is not thoroughly acquainted with the real strength and weakness of his cause, he knows not where to choose the most impressive argument. When the mark is shrouded in obscurity, the only...

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences—makes them, as the poets tell us, ‘charm the crowd’s ears more finely.’ Educated men lay down broad general...

the matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice …

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

He could be as memorable an orator as his father, particularly when he was speaking on that topic that had captured his imagination;

From her character in the HBO miniseries: “The art of politics is the art of applying the seat of the britches to the seat of the chair.

Whether it’s trying to convince others that something is more true, more virtuous, or more desirable–all communication is rhetoric in action.

Peace, freedom and liberty!

Just as the soul animates the body, so, in a way, meaning breathes life into a word.

I expect him to be straightforward. We won’t get a dizzying round of rhetoric. He will say what he means and mean what he says.

Ideas” in politics are often intuition fancy dress.

MENDACIOUS, adj. Addicted to rhetoric.

proved once again that substance will always trump campaign rhetoric.

Sometime rhetoric was just another way to lie and impress persons, and he knew this

Language is not law; it is in fact a lot like music. Speech is jazz – first you learn the basic rules, and then you become good enough to improvise all the time. Writing is...

The general tone of the rhetoric form Gore has been quite hostile.

He (Larry Summers) can frame arguments with such force and conviction that people think he knows more than he does.

True eloquence is irresistible. It charms by its images of beauty, it enforces an argument by its vehement simplicity. Orators whose speeches are “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” only prevail where truth is...

(Emerson’s) aphorisms tend to be chicken soup for the academic soul or gobledygook of a man who prefers the sounds of words to their meanings.

[Rumsfield’s] reply included a complex formulation that would become inextricably associated with him: ‘There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are...