Persuasive Language Quotes

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

… a style of oratory that I never heard equaled in this or any other country

The bully pulpit is not an open microphone. You have to target it very carefully.

What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

The description was elaborate, the Senator himself suggesting some of the nicer touches, and every line of it was written and on its way to New York before Mr. Seward had uttered a word in the Senate Chamber.

One thing I learned about Gordon Brown is you've got to have the strength to just get in there and take him on. When you first hear him spouting his statistics and boasting about his record, it can be quite intimidating. But over time, shadowing him, I just realised that a lot of it was rubbish; a lot of it was baloney.

Today it is not the classroom nor the classics which are the repositories of models of eloquence, but the ad agencies.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.

Over the centuries, Chinese bureaucrats perfected the dark arts of emptiness to such an extent that when they deliver speeches these days, they often recite verbatim speeches that they have previously delivered, with the sparest of adjustments.

I'm a charming coward; I fight with words.

It really does seem that the Democrat's problem isn't that they're calling for timetables - it's that they're calling them 'timetables'. You're up against Bush and the Republicans - you've got to bring some zing. Don't call them timetables - call them 'Patriot Dates', 'Freedom Deadlines'... 'Glory Goals'.

Metaphors convince at once or not at all.

What writing a poem really does - and what figuring how to perform effectively really does - is forces people to listen to you. It frames your thoughts in such a way that grabs people's attentions and forces them to hear the things that you're actually saying.

I'm right, and you're smart, and sooner or later you'll see I'm right.

Regan’s greatness as a rhetorician was in his delivery not in the content of what he said as with Churchill and Roosevelt.

Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech.

That which separates ourselves from previous generations is rhetoric.

But words are more powerful than anything.

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them.

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

rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination.

that your power of command with simple language was one of the magnificent things of our century. (from the poem: result)

I think we now know the limits also of intelligence and rhetoric.

The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem - new persuasive words for defaced or degraded ones.