rhetorical effectiveness Quotes

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences-makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely.' Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions.

The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.

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

The truth is always the strongest argument.

Great men, like nature, use simple language.

How Donald Trump has come so far with so few words - how he even managed to keep up conversationally with all those beauty queens - is a question I don't expect ever to be solved.

Words are like butter Rolling off my lips Cut like a knife And now I'm sinking battleships

Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit."

Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are in their nature stronger than their opposites; so that if decisions be made, not in conformity to the rule of propriety, it must have been that they have been got the better of through fault of the advocates themselves: and this is deserving reprehension.

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.

A preacher who is too big for a little crowd would be too little for a big crowd.

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.

A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue - which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.

It's not enough to be right because he [Rick Perry] is right, you got to be persuasively right, got to be intellectually agile, and I think he can do it.

Coolidge made less speeches and got more votes than any man that ever run. (William Jennings) Bryan was listened to and cheered by more people than any single human in politics, and he lost. So there is a doubt just whether talking does you good or harm.

Nothing is more certain than much of the force; as well as grace, of arguments or instructions depends their conciseness.

Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woefully small targets.

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

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.

I mean, look, no matter how you feel about Bush, watching him speak is difficult. It's like- it's like watching a drunk man cross an icy street.

No man ever yet thought whether he was preaching well without weakening his sermon.

We oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable.

The net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seemed to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan.

Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.

Please explain to me why John Kerry sounds more dickish telling the truth than Bush sounds when he's lying. How is that possible?