Selected rhetoric quotes

1. It would be easier for the Devil to go to church and cross himself with holy water than for these people to comprehend the ideas which are accepted facts to us today.

2. It must be said that today, at the end of its semantic evolution, the word 'terrorist' is an intrinsically propagandistic term. It has no neutral readability. It dispenses with all reasoned examination of political situations, of their causes and consequences.

3. In the history of the nation, there has never been a political party so ridiculous as today's Democrats. It's as if all the brain-damaged people in America got together and formed a voting bloc.

4. So for those of you who haven't read any of my five best-selling books: Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly.

5. Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now.

6. Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.

7. It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

8. (Howard) Dean is a raving nut bag...a raving, sinister, demagogic nutbag...I and a few other people saw that he should be destroyed.

9. Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology, it is a matter of cleanliness. In just this same way anti-Semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness.

10. I have said publicly no option should be off the table, but I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table.

11. The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

12. Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand, he goes one further and clinches his fist.

13. It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show.

14. Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

15. Be your strong and simple words Keen to wound as sharpened swords, And wide as targes let them be, With their shade to cover ye.

16. 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.

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

18. A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

19. I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day.

20. 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.

21. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.

22. 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.

23. Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service - but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay - and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops - Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes - they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they - Darius!

24. The point of quotations is that one can use another's words to be insulting.

25. I come from a place that likes grandeur; it likes large gestures; it is not inhibited by flourish; it is a rhetorical society; it is a society of physical performance; it is a society of style.

26. Look at The Rock's competition! Look at him! It looks like a big monkey came down here, took a crap, and out came Mankind!

27. 'You know, to address crowds and make promises does not require very much brains.'

28. Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.

29. 'The recession is over.' This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclear. See: Depression.

30. Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.

31. Of course, everybody says they're for peace. Hitler was for peace. Everybody is for peace. The question is: what kind of peace?

32. The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.

33. In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.

34. The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the 'liberal' rhetoric of 'equal time.' But mistake it not.

35. 'They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker...

36. Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

37. I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as 'The Boneless Wonder'. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.

38. He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.

39. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. - May 24, 2005 [66]

40. His words ... like so many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command.

41. You're asking the leader of the Western world a chickenshit question like that?

42. To make matters worse, they have elected a foetus as the party leader. I bet a lot of them wish they had not voted against abortion now!

43. Regarding the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, 'Quote me as saying that that Imperial bastard will never set foot in Louisiana, and that when I call him a sonofabitch I am not using profanity, but am referring to the circumstances of his birth.'

44. Kane, you think you impress the Rock when your music hits? All the lights go out. You got fire coming out of the post, fire shooting out of your ass, you got fire coming out of everywhere and then all of a sudden you're doing jumping jacks, you're happy, because Kane can talk. The big red retard can finally speak! Well, Kane, the Rock says this, he's in a giving mood tonight. You come on out here, the Rock got a little gift for you. He'll give you this microphone right here so you can talk in front of the millions *crowd finishes it* and millions of the Rock's fans, take your little voice gimmic, stick it to your throat and say this, (Doing an Impression of Kane) 'My name is Kane... and I am a roody poo candy ass!' And the Rock says this Kane, that little voice box you used to use, you left the Rock with one choice on what to do with it. The Rock says he'll take your little voice box, take all the batteries out, lube it up turn that sum bitch sideways and stick it straight up your candy ass!

45. Let me tell you quite frankly: in one way or another we will have to finish with the Jews. The fuhrer once expressed it as follows: should Jewry once again succeed in inciting a world war, the bloodletting could not be limited to the peoples they drove to war but the Jews themselves would be done for in Europe. If the Jewish tribe survives the war in Europe while we sacrifice our blood for the preservation of Europe, this war will be but a partial success. Basically, I must presume, therefore, that the Jews will disappear. To that end I have started negotiations to expel them to the east. In any case, there will be a great Jewish migration. But what is to become of the Jews? Do you think that they will be settled in villages in the conquered eastern territories? In Berlin we have been told not to complicate matters: since neither these territories, nor our own, have any use for them, we should liquidate them ourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you to remain unmoved by pleas for pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we encounter them and wherever possible, in order to maintain the overall mastery of the Reich here... For us the Jews are also exceptionally damaging because they are being such gluttons. There are an estimated 2.5 million Jews in the General Government, perhaps. 3.5 million. These 3.5 million Jews, we cannot shoot them, nor can we poison them. Even so, we can take steps which in some way or other will pave the way for their destruction, notably in connection with the grand measures to be discussed in the Reich. The General Government must become just as judenfrei (free of Jews) as the Reich!

46. [Promo from July 17th 2006] Hello out there to all my fans right there in San Antonio, Texas! It's me Mick Foley in the WWE Studios and I know what a lot of you are thinking. You're thinking: Isn't that the shirt Mick wore when he was interviewed by Katie Couric on Halloween a few years ago? You're darn right it is, but I'm not here to talk about Katie Couric right now, or the beautiful Melina for that matter. I'm here to talk about the Nature Boy! Whooo! Ric Flair and comments he made about me. You see Ric was on the show last Monday actually bragging about beating me two straight falls in a two out of three falls match. You see Ric, I have a different take on things, you see I seem to remember you bludgeoned, bloody with your family in tears, which begs the question: Just what world do you inhabit Ric, where all those things can be construed as a positive!? How much worse could it have possibly have gotten!? Are you really under the impression I was trying to win the match? Because if I had been, I would have! The barbwired bat under the ring was no accident Ric. From the very get go I intended to leave you lay and that is exactly what I did. And you're out there saying Mick Foley posing a challenge, anywhere, anyplace any match of you're choosing. Well let me see... uh... I don't want to wrestle you anywhere, anyplace, in any type of match ever! What part of 'no rematch' do you not understand! Let me put it in the words of a famous song: A no, no, no, no, a no, no, no, no, a no, no, no, NO REMATCH RIC! YEAH!

47. It is rather a pity, considered from the standpoint of the professional politician or opinion-taker, that nobody knows exactly what 'credibility' is, or how one acquires it. 'Credibility' doesn't stand for anything morally straightforward, like meaning what you say or saying what you mean. Nor does it signify anything remotely quantifiable - any correlation between evidence presented and case made. Suggestively, perhaps, it entered the language as a consensus euphemism during the Vietnam War, when 'concerned' members of the Eastern Establishment spoke of a 'credibility gap' rather than give awful utterance to the thought that the Johnson administration was systematically lying. To restore its 'credibility,' that administration was urged - not to stop lying, but to improve its public presentation. At some stage in the lesson learned from that injunction, the era of postmodern politics began. It doesn't seem ridiculous now to have 'approval ratings' that fluctuate from week to week, because these are based upon the all-important 'perception' factor, which has in turn quite lost its own relationship to the word 'perceptive.'

48. The Rock has dream, has a dream that he's winning the Royal Rumble, going on to Wrestlemania and from coast to coast, Wisconsin to China, and back to Wisconsin! Sea to shining sea, The Rock one more time on top of the mountaintop, WWF Champion! And you see just like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr had a dream, well we all have dreams, but there has been one dream that has become a reality to The Rock, one dream thats becoming true to The Rock. Day after day, night after night, 24 hours a day,.... 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and that one dream is The Rock forever whipping ass, whipping ass....Thank God Almighty, The Rock is whipping ass! If ya smell....what The Rock is cooking!

49. ...the self-indulgent and auto-congratulatory Noam Chomsky, arguably one of the most virulent anti-Semitic Jews you can hope to encounter. His endless diatribes on what he wants you to believe to be the horrible treatment of the Palestinian people at the hands of the cold-hearted Israeli oppressors are unparalleled in literary hyperbole. Unfortunately, he doesn't offer one shred of evidence to back this up. He invites you to join him, the consummate Jewish intellect, in collective snobbery by simply accepting (because you are so frightfully well-educated as he is) that what he says is so. I have yet to see one single person stand up and ask, 'Dr. Chomsky, what is the evidence for this?' Should this take place, hopefully there will be a paramedic team standing by to resuscitate him. --Moss David Posner, July 3, 2006 [234]

50. Jesus Christ did what every other reformer who has produced any considerable effect upon the world has done. He accommodated his doctrines to the prepossessions of those whom he addressed. He used a language for this view sufficiently familiar to our comprehensions. He said, - However new or strange my doctrines may appear to you, they are in fact only the restoration and re-establishment of those original institutions and ancient customs of your own law and religion. The constitutions of your faith and policy, although perfect in their origin, have become corrupt and altered, and have fallen into decay. I profess to restore them to their pristine authority and splendour

51. I saw in the face of Mr. Gladstone a blending of opposite qualities. There were the peace and gentleness of the lamb, with the strength and determination of the lion. Deep earnestness was expressed in all his features. He began his speech in a tone conciliatory and persuasive. His argument against the bill was based upon statistics which he handled with marvelous facility. He showed that the amount of crimes in Ireland for which the Force Bill was claimed as a remedy by the Government was not greater than the great class of crimes in England, and that therefore there was no reason for a Force Bill in one country more than in the other. After marshaling his facts and figures to this point, in a masterly and convincing manner, raising his voice and pointing his finger directly at Mr. Balfour, he exclaimed, in a tone almost menacing and tragic, 'What are you fighting for?' The effect was thrilling. His peroration was a splendid appeal to English love of liberty. When he sat down the House was instantly thinned out. There seemed neither in members nor spectators any desire to hear another voice after hearing Mr. Gladstone's.

52. Bravo, Streicher!

53. Hold the mic up, jabroni, before The Rock slaps the taste out of your mouth! You *referring to Stone Cold Steve Austin* come out here and you spit your little talk about how the Rock comes out and spits his little nursery rhymes. Well, I'll tell you what, the Great One has a little nursery rhyme for you, Stone Cold, and it goes like this: Mary had a little lamb... Well, I'll tell you what, piss on the lamb, piss on Mary, and piss on you! The Rock is gonna go out there tonight and do what do what he does best, and that's lay the smackdown on your roody-poo *crowd finishes it for him by saying 'candy ass'* - Uh uh! Hey! Don't do it! Don't do it, because the Rock guaran-damn-tees to prove to you *points to audience*, you *points to interviewer*, this goof holding the camera, this chick gawking at the Rock, he will prove to the millions *crowd finishes it for him* and millions of the Rock's fans exactly why the Rock is the Great One, exactly why the Rock is the chosen one, and exactly why the Rock is without a shadow of a doubt the best damn WWF champ there ever was, if you smelllllll *crowd says 'smell' along with him* - Hey! Uh uh Philly! This ain't sing-a-long with the champ! If ya smelllllalalalalow what the Rock... *The Rock pauses very theatrically, lifts a hand to his face, uses it to turn his head to the side, pushes his chin down, and cocks the People's Eyebrow* ...is cooking!

54. The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they ... have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. The people are made to transfer their allegiance from the old gods to the new under the pretense that the new gods really are what their sound instinct had always told them but what before they had only dimly seen. And the most effective way to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning.... Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed.... If one has not one's self experienced this process, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change of the meaning of words, the confusion it causes, and the barriers to any rational discussion which it creates... And the confusion becomes worse because this change of meaning of words describing political ideals is not a single event but a continuous process, a technique employed consciously or unconsciously to direct the people. Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, and words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them.

55. The advice 'bomb them back to the Stone Age' may show that the speaker is already there himself, but it could, if followed, force all of us to join him.

56. See, I have taken England with both my hands.

57. ''Lord Chancellor, did I deliver the speech well ?' 'Very well indeed, sir,' was the enthusiastic answer. 'I am glad of that,' replied the king; 'for there was nothing in it.''

58. The narrowest patriotism could be made to appear noble, the foulest accusations could be represented as an indignant outburst of humanitarianism, and the meanest and most vindictive aims falsely disguised as idealism. Everything was legitimate which could make the soldiers go on fighting.

59. Alla parola 'comizio' d'ora innanzi prego di sostituire la parola 'raduno di propaganda'. Il comizio ci ricorda tempi superati per sempre.

60. The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams.

61. 'The will of the nation' is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.

62. Which do you believe most likely to enter an insane convention, a body of English gentlemen honoured by the favour of their Sovereign and the confidence of their fellow-subjects, managing your affairs for five years, I hope with prudence, and not altogether without success, or a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself?

63. A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity who can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and glorify himself.

64. The worst atrocity in Bulgaria is Gladstone's pamphlet on the subject.

65. Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.

66. Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.

67. Of course one can jump up and down yelling Europe ! Europe ! Europe ! But it amounts to nothing and it means nothing.

68. They make me laugh with their 'Rubicon': 'Rubicon', 'Rubicon', what does it mean ?

69. Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions.

70. Oh words, what crimes are committed in your name!

71. Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les regles sont infaillibles; et l'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus eloquent qui n'en a point.

72. Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

73. He who maintains he's right-if his the gift of tongues- Will have the last word certainly.

74. George W. Bush. The 'W' stands for 'wrong'.

75. The junior senator from Wisconsin, by his reckless charges, has so preyed upon the fears and hatreds and prejudices of the American people that he has started a prairie fire which neither he nor anyone else may be able to control.

76. Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.

77. At the end of reasons comes persuasion.

78. In arguing too, the parson owned his skill, For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length, and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew.

79. The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

80. 'When everyone routinely uses profanity, it will lose its emphatic value, and then how will we express ourselves strongly? Will we be forced to rely on carefully worded arguments filled with unassailable reasoning?'

81. Together we must rise to ever higher and higher platitudes.

82. Socrates is not using dialectic to understand rhetoric, he is using it to destroy it, or at least to bring it into disrepute, and so his questions are not real questions at all... they are just word-traps which Gorgias and his fellow rhetoricians fall into.

83. Lightning hits! Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine 'virtue.' But arete. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric.

84. The halo around the heads of Plato and Socrates is now gone. He sees that they consistently are doing exactly that which they accuse the Sophists of doing... using emotionally persuasive language for the ulterior purpose of making the weaker argument, the case for dialectic, appear the stronger. We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves.

85. Poor rhetoric, once 'learning' itself, now becomes reduced to the teaching of mannerisms and forms, Aristotelian forms, for writing, as if these mattered.

86. He was, like, Piggy on Lord of the Flies on that debate, wasn't he? I thought they were gonna kill him with a rock.

87. The idea of a liberal elite is not intellectually robust. It's never been enunciated with anything approaching scholarly rigor, it has been refuted countless times, and it falls apart under any sort of systematic scrutiny. Yet the idea persists. It did not die with Richard Nixon or peter out with the busing controversy or depart the national scene with the wily Bill Clinton. Indeed, it has greater currency on the street today than do twenty years' worth of blue-ribbon studies and a lifetime of responsible sociology.

88. This is the president that looked in the soul of Putin [see George W. Bush's quote above], and I could have told him, he was a KGB agent. By definition he doesn't have a soul. I mean, this is a waste of time, right? This is nonsense, but this is the world we're living in right now.

89. If you understand this refrain, you're gonna' understand everything I want to say to you today. It has four parts:

90. That sovereign of insufferables, Oscar Wilde has ensued with his opulence of twaddle and his penury of sense. He has mounted his hind legs and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck, to the capital edification of circumjacent fools and foolesses, fooling with their foolers. He has tossed off the top of his head and uttered himself in copious overflows of ghastly bosh. The ineffable dunce has nothing to say and says it-says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire. There never was an impostor so hateful, a blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft. Therefore is the she fool enamored of the feel of his tongue in her ear to tickle her understanding. The limpid and spiritless vacuity of this intellectual jelly-fish is in ludicrous contrast with the rude but robust mental activities that he came to quicken and inspire. Not only has he no thought, but no thinker. His lecture is mere vebal ditchwater-meaningingless, trite and without coherence. It lacks even the nastiness that exalts and refines his verse. Moreover, it is obviously his own; he had not even the energy and independence to steal it. And so, with a knowledge that would equip and idiot to dispute with a cast-iron dog, and eloquence to qualify him for the duties of a caller on a hog-ranche, and an imagination adequate to the conception of a tom-cat, when fired by contemplation of a fiddle-string, this consummate and star-like youth, missing everything his heaven-appointed functions and offices, wanders about, posing as a statute of himself, and, like the sun-smitten image of Memnon, emitting meaningless murmurs in the blaze of women's eyes. He makes me tired. And this gawky gowk has the divine effrontery to link his name with those of Swinburne, Rossetti and Morris-this dunghill he-hen would fly with eagles. He dares to set his tongue to the honored name of Keats. He is the leader, quoth'a, of a renaissance in art, this man who cannot draw-of a revival of letters, this man who cannot write! This little and looniest of a brotherhood of simpletons, whom the wicked wits of London, haling him dazed from his obscurity, have crowned and crucified as King of the Cranks, has accepted the distinction in stupid good faith and our foolish people take him at his word. Mr. Wilde is pinnacled upon a dazzling eminence but the earth still trembles to the dull thunder of the kicks that set him up.

91. ...their existense is putrid. It is absolutely putrid.

92. [She should be] Hung, drawn and...quartered...hung in diamonds, drawn in a coach, and...quartered in the best house in the land.