Richard Dawkins Quotes

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.

Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woefully small targets.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the right side of the argument, it just matters whether you have the right ear.

We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us

Persuasiveness takes finesse; it takes an understanding of human psychology. And intention is everything.

I am her friend, and her tongue is in my mouth. I can speak her sentiments for her, though Ethel Waters can do very well indeed in speaking for herself.

Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic; since both are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to impeach.

Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible.

Weirdly, an image of Adrian’s Love painting came back to me. I thought of the jagged red streak, slashing through the blackness, ripping it apart. Staring at Jill and her inconsolable pain, I suddenly understood his art a little bit better.

After all, the only way to communicate is to find someone who can comprehend; the only way to be forgiven is to find someone who is willing to forgive.

Sometimes when you hit send, you can imagine the message going straight into the person's heart. But other times, like this time, it feels like the words are merely falling into a well.

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.

And this is how I know that it's all just words, words, words - that fundamentally, they make no difference... Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act, who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument?

The best way to truly understand narrative art is to experience it.

If you'd listen, even for a little while I'd be pleased Remember, once more we were born into this world crying. Your dreams and hopes for tomorrow are all in this world.

Listening is one of the forms of love.

Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument - as in having a fight.

That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.

We often talk too much & listen too little. The surer route to winning a friend isn't to convince them that you're right, but that you care what they think.

Swallow my words. Taste my thoughts. And if it's too nasty, spit it back at me!.

Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.

Communication is not saying something; communication is being heard.

I have a feeling that in art the need to understand and the need to communicate are one.

When Gold argues the cause, eloquence is impotant.