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...

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...

I think some of the rhetoric against the president was over the top.

Ce n’est pas la première fois que je remarque combien, en France particulièrement, les mots ont plus d’empire que les idées.”(“It’s not the first time I’ve noticed how much more power words have than ideas,...

I discovered that night (in his college’s student politics) that an audience has a feel to it, and, in the parlance of the theater, that audience and I were together.

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.

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect...

[On political correctness:] Any intended message mattered less than the received message, and every received message could be interpreted in whatever way the receiver wanted.

As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children...

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...

Their message is conveyed in that hortatory tone and declamatory voice used by politicians when starting a condition contrary to fact. People who aren’t cowed don’t spend a lot of time proclaiming they won’t be...

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same...

In all societies, public rhetoric involves some measure of lying, and history — political history and art history — is made when someone effectively confronts the lie. But in really scary societies all public conversation...

Because of demagogues, rhetoric has a tainted reputation in our time. However, rhetoric is central to democratic governance. It can fuse passion and persuasion, moving free people to freely choose what is noble.

The Montgomery bus boycott would have happened without King, but King’s oratory helped to ensure that the boycott came one of those exceptional local movements for justice that would send ripples of inspiration to oppressed...

He was a man with a chest, and he wanted to give thoughtful expression to the passion of his heart.

but that does not mean that the statements in it are anything more than rhetoric.

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.