"Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action,..." - Quote by Theodore Roosevelt
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.
More by Theodore Roosevelt
“I am a part of everything that I have read.”
“While the nation that has dared to be great, that has had the will and the power to change the destiny of the ages, in the end must die, yet no less surely the nation that has played the part of the weakling must also die; and whereas the nation that has done nothing leaves nothing behind it, the nation that has done a great work really continues, though in changed form, to live forevermore.”
“I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.”
More on Action
More on Rhetoric
“Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”
“Politics pretty quiet over the week-end. Democrats are attacking and the Republicans are defending. All the Democrats have to do is promise "what they would do if they got in." But the Republicans have to promise "what they would do" and then explain why they haven't already "done it".”
“Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong ... And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.”