William Butler Yeats Quotes

I do like to turn a phrase, but it's all about how you turn it.

One of your jobs as a speechwriter is to transform the bureaucratic into the poetic.

Metaphors convince at once or not at all.

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

There is a truth and beauty in rhetoric; but it oftener serves ill turns than good ones.

Similes prove nothing, but yet greatly lighten and relieve the tedium of argument.

In oratory the will must predominate.

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.

The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

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

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

I have found that words that are loaded with pathos and create a seductive euphoria are apt to promote nonsense.

When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.

I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts.

The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what your saying, and they can't know what you've saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting until you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.

Political speeches are a particularly low form of rhetoric.

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

As a Shakespeare character, if you can persuade someone in a sentence or a speech, you've got it right.

If you look at the copies of Churchill's speeches that have survived, they are heavily marked up. He was scrupulous about the impact of each word. He preferred short words and the repetition of short words. He knew everything about the techniques of rhetoric.

Young people are dazzled by the brilliancy of antithesis, and employ it. Matter-of-fact men, and those who like precision, naturally fall into comparisons and metaphor. Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied even with hyperbole. As for the sublime, it is only great geniuses and those of the very highest order that are able to rise to its height.