Georges Clemenceau Quotes

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

The more ideological, the politician, the greater his need for illusion

An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.

It is true the orator may make a myriad replica of his own passion out of those who listen to him. But that does not prove he is right or they are not fools.

Religion is like magic. It is all about tricks.

Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.

On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.

Only lawyers and painters can turn white to black.

The demagogue ... is a good showman, whether at Nuremberg at a youth conference, or in Georgia at a political barbecue. He knows the tricks of the ham actor, the gestures, the tones of voice that can arouse passions. Always he dresses himself up as the little man come to life, grown to Brobdingnagian stature and become the "Duce" or the "Leader" or, maybe, "Ploughboy Pete.

Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.

One of our statesmen said, "The curse of this country is eloquent men.

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses remedies.

We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catchwords, devised to flatter rather than instruct.

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

Society is made of words, whose meanings the powerful control, or try to.

Demagoguery from the pulpit is no different from demagoguery on the campaign trail. If anything, it is worse, because it clothes itself in self-righteousness.

Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable …

I am inclined to believe dictators. Not to is dangerous.

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.

Ideology gives people the illusion of principles and dignity while making it easier for them to part with them.

Politics is the art of making the people believe that they are in power, when in fact, they have none.