Jeff Greenfield Quotes

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

Talkers have always ruled. They will continue to rule. The smart thing is to join them.

In oratory the will must predominate.

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

Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Now I see that going out into the testing ground of men it is the tongue and not the deed that wins the day.

I think it was when I realised I could talk anybody into doing just about anything I wanted them to.

What I'd really like to control is not machines, but people.

He who frames the question wins the debate.

Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

He who demands does not command.

Power comes through public persuasion.

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.

I'm not good at throwing around rhetoric.

If you don't have a good case, and you don't have a good message, then shining a light on it is not going to get you very far.

I had done debate programmes before and quite often you go into them thinking: 'I might need to build some energy in the room.' 'On Question Time,' the reverse is true. A lot of the time, I am just trying to not have it turn into a slanging match.

Learning how to be persuasive has been really crucial to my life both professionally and personally.

The more I read about the rules the great orators used, the more I realised, of course, this is how you stir people's hearts, and you persuade and cajole and move people out of fixed positions. The techniques are quite menacingly easy.

I can move any crowd.

When I talk, people listen.

I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken that by the written word, and that every great movement on this globe owes its rise to the great speakers and not to the great writers.