Richard Rorty Quotes

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory !!

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

The first, that their pretensions to this possession of an art properly so called in their art of speaking are entirely unfounded; and the second, that they are involved in a profound mistake in their confusion of the good with the pleasant.

Talking and eloquence are not the same.

As reason is the glory of man, so the lamp of reason is eloquence.

We need to become more acutely conscious that words matter. None of us would deny that ideas and opinions matter, but we can sometimes be careless about how we express them. The words we choose to advance an idea, opinion, or point of view have a huge impact on how people react and respond to that view. When we use hyperbole, we increase the chances of being misunderstood and of promoting equally exaggerated counter-reactions, especially when people are reacting almost instantaneously.

I'm not good at throwing around rhetoric.

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.

Poetry is a man arguing with himself; rhetoric is a man arguing with others.

I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words.

The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use.

The writing is all done, so it's all about verbalizing everything from point A to point B, and certainly there's a bit of politics involved, so it's a different thing.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

I'm a talker. I love a good debate.

A word after a word after a word is power.

Nobody has a magic lamp which can tell you in advance whether what you say will be effective in persuading an audience.

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times.

Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others.

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.

I'm a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there's a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level.

It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.