Plato Quotes

And they'll vote for me because I'm the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.

Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong ... And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.

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

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.

All politicians are to some extent salesmen.

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

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions.

Persuasion is effected through the medium of the hearers, when they shall have been brought to a state of excitement under the influence of speech; for we do not, when influenced by pain or joy, or partiality or dislike, award our decisions in the same way; about which means of persuasion alone, I declare that the system-mongers of the present day busy themselves.

Politics and acting are very closely tied. The job is to convince.

An animal can learn to fight, but to sing beautiful things and make people believe them.

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

The speeches to be wary of are those that begin with I'm just going to say a few words.

Natural politicians are skilled actors, recreating reality, adjusting and ad-libbing, synthesizing the scenes, saying the same thing over and over again and making it seem that theyare saying it for the first time.

Time is an illusion-to orators.

There's one word that exists in every language on the face of the Earth and in every society since man began to speak. And the word is truth. And in every language it means exactly the same thing. Truth is . . . what you get other people to believe.

Hitler showed the evil that could be done by the art of rhetoric. Churchill showed how it could help to save humanity.

Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.

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

How wrong to think I was anyone else, like thinking grass stains make you a beautiful view, like getting kissed makes you kissable, like feeling warm makes you coffee, like liking movies makes you a director. How utterly incorrect to think it any other way, a box of crap is treasures, a boy smiling means it, a gentle moment is a life improved.

The aim of forensic oratory is to teach, to delight, to move.

Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?. Of all the means I know to lead men, the most effectual is a concealed mystery.The hankering of the mind is irresistible.

We grow hostile to many an artist or writer, not because we finally come to see he has deceived us, but because he thought no subtler means were required to ensnare us.