Theodore Parker Quotes

I'm a better polemicist in prose.

Commonly they must use their feet for defense whose only weapon is their tongue.

Political speeches are a particularly low form of rhetoric.

Demosthenes, when taunted by Pytheas that all his arguments "smelled of the lamp," replied, "Yes, but your lamp and mine, my friend, do not witness the same labours.

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.

I can't argue my way out of a paper bag.

The joke is mightier than the sword.

I love arguing. I always say that I'll never win a physical battle, but I can always win a mental battle. I mean, not really, because I never really argue with anyone.

Though we cannot out-vote them we will out-argue them.

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

William Jennings Bryan is a much better orator than I am. I have to think.

The purpose of oratory or philosophy [is to] respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.

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

I always thought Jon Stewart was an extremely good surgeon with his scalpel. He would have Republicans on who, I guess, were unclear about what Stewart was up to, and while Jon Stewart was being nice, he was building a case for drowning them.

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

I think comedy is a good way to help people change their minds. I think that if you're laughing and getting a message across, it's a lot easier than when somebody is screaming in your face.

I would say to people of a libertarian conservative position on an issue, do not do a taped interview. You're going to come out looking really bad. No matter what you say, no matter how eloquently you answer a question, your answer is not going to be what you said.

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

I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained.

I'm not good at throwing around rhetoric.

I was on the debate team.

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.

When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery book.

Metaphors convince at once or not at all.

There is no learned man but will confess be hath much profited by reading controversies,--his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic they teach that contraries laid together, more evidently appear; it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth.