#Rhetoric Quotes

“Why, friends, you go to do you know not what: Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not: I must tell you then: You have forgot the will I told you of. . . . . Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas. . . . . Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?”

“Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and fun of invention: taunt him with the licence of ink: if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy shee.”

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”

“For Brutus is an honourable man;So are they all, all honourable men.”

“He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.”

“You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;And being men, hearing the will of Caesar,It will inflame you, it will make you mad.”

“Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear.”

“A good indignation makes an excellent speech.”

“Give me the facts, and I will twist them the way I want, to suit my argument.”

“There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, timid policies, offer today a path to safety.”

“It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.”

“In law, what plea so tainted and corrupts, but being seasoned with a gracious voice obscures the show of evil.”

“The influence exercised over the human mind by apt analogies is and has always been immense. Whether they translate an established truth into simple language or whether they adventurously aspire to reveal the unknown, they are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.”

“Apt analogies are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.”

“These, Gentlemen, are the opinions upon which I base my facts.”

“Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.”

“The literary gift is a very dangerous gift to possess if you are not telling the truth, and I would a great deal rather, for my part, have a man stumble in his speech than to feel he was so exceedingly smooth that he had better be watched both day and night.”

“If you have a radio, the next three months is a good time to have it quit working. All you will hear from now until the 4th of November will be: 'We must get our government out of the hands of predatory wealth.' 'The good people of this great country are burdened to death with taxes. Now what I intend to do is ...' What he intends to do is try and get elected. That's all any of them intend to do. Another one that will hum over the old static every night will be: 'This country has reached a crisis in its national existence.'”

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

“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".”

“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.”

“Our public men are speaking every day on something, but they ain't saying anything.”

“rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination.”

“George Bernard Shaw of England stopped over just long enough to make one speech in Bombay, India, started a war and 100 Indians killed each other. That's what I call good speech-making. The only enthusiasm any of our speakers can rouse is a demand to kill the speaker.”

“There wasn't any more truth in over half of what any so-called orator said. If it wasn't a Deliberate Lie, why it was an Exaggerated Falsehood.”

“Coolidge made less speeches and got more votes than any man that ever run. (William Jennings) Bryan was listened to and cheered by more people than any single human in politics, and he lost. So there is a doubt just whether talking does you good or harm.”

“Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.”

“Democrats always were a cheap lot. They never had much money to operate on.... They would rather make a speech than a dollar. They cultivate their voice instead of their finances.”

“Give me a few minutes to talk away my face and I can seduce the Queen of France.”

“The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.”

“Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.".”

“If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.”

“Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.”

“How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?”

“Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power.”

“Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action.”

“Weasel words from mollycoddles will never do when the day demands prophetic clarity from greathearts. Manly men must emerge for this hour of trial.”

“However little president Obama knows or cares about economics, he knows a lot about politics - and especially political rhetoric. 'High-speed rail' is simply another set of loft words to justify continued expansion of government spending. So are words like 'investment in education' or 'investment' in any number of other things, which serves the same political purpose.”

“One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.”

“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”

“It is truly a triumph of rhetoric over reality when people can believe that going into politics is 'public service,' but that producing food, shelter, transportation, or medical care is not.”

“One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words."”

“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.”

“One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called ''weasel words.'' When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a ''weasel word'' after another there is nothing left of the other.”

“When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well ladies and gentleman, I'd follow the example of their nominee; don't inhale.”

“Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.”

“Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.”

“I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.”

“I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.”

“There is nothing like instances to grow hair on a bald-headed argument.”