Definition of Rhetoric

Rhetoric

The art of composition; especially, elegant composition in prose.

Oratory; the art of speaking with propriety, elegance, and force.

Hence, artificial eloquence; fine language or declamation without conviction or earnest feeling.

Fig. : The power of persuasion or attraction; that which allures or charms.

Related Definitions:

And, Art, Artificial, Attraction, Composition, Conviction, Declamation, Earnest, Elegance, Elegant, Eloquence, Especially, Feeling, Fig, Fine, Force, Hence, In, Language, Of, Or, Oratory, Persuasion, Power, Propriety, Prose, Speaking, That, The, Which, With, Without

Rhetoric Quotations

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.
Theodore Roosevelt

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
Plato

Today's misery is real unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies. This is the Obama Misery Index and its at a record high. Its going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work - its going to take a new president.
Mitt Romney

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell

Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.
Mel Brooks

Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.
Friedrich Schiller

When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes.
Christopher Lasch

Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order.
Christopher Lasch

So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.
Howard Dean

The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it.
Mary Astell

We are looking for bipartisan solutions not partisan rhetoric.
Paul Ryan

We need to think more about the nature of rhetoric in anthropology. There isn't a body of knowledge and thought to fall back on in this regard.
Clifford Geertz

You may be right that people say: 'You know what, we had Obama. He was inexperienced. The guy had great rhetoric, sounded good, looked good, but has turned out to be an utter disaster. I want someone where I have confidence and credibility that they're up to the job and that I can trust what they tell me.'
Karl Rove

Like my colleagues, I did about 10 to 15 town hall meetings on this issue; and what I found is people came with a sincere interest to learn, a sincere interest to cut through the rhetoric and understand how this Medicare bill impacts them in their daily lives.
Chris Chocola

I think he could have made most of the trips and gone to most of the fund-raisers if he would have avoided the partisan rhetoric and talked to the country as President in each of these appearances rather than to the narrow partisan audiences.
Robert Teeter

On the other side, I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented, is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech.
Ed Gillespie

There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.
Dick Wolf

President Bush has consistently used rhetoric, and that is not convincing given his past record.
Grace Napolitano

Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.
Paul Getty

In the coming year, I believe we can make sure America lives up to its legacy as a land of opportunity if the President is willing to back up his rhetoric with substance.
Ron Kind

We owe our troops more than rhetoric; we owe them a real plan. The Administration has yet to put forward a strategy for achieving stability in Iraq, ending the conflict, and handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraq and the new Iraqi government.
Dennis Cardoza

If Americans want to see results instead of rhetoric, if taxpayers would like solutions instead of sound bites, and hard work instead of horse trading, I suggest you take a short look, and it won't take much longer, at the accomplishments of this Congress.
Alcee Hastings

My colleagues, while it is good that the Nation is finally focused on the critical issue of securing our ports, our rhetoric and our passion about Dubai must be matched by the funding necessary to keep our ports and our citizens safe.
Allyson Schwartz

When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy.
John F. Kerry

The American people must not buy into the Democrat rhetoric.
Virginia Foxx

Democrats were simply hoping to win some political points by getting their outlandish rhetoric published in the newspapers and heard on the talk shows.
John Doolittle

So I think it's important to communicate with the people in terms of what the real facts are on these proposals and try to have a discussion and a dialogue that gives people information. I think they're hungry for that rather than just political rhetoric.
John Podesta

The Democratic Party opposes tax cuts but it cannot say so publicly. Thus, it is forced to support the idea of lowering the tax burden but using class warfare rhetoric to dispute the allocation of the relief.
Dick Morris

I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric.
Gerrit Smith

More Rhetoric Quotations

Rhetoric Translations

rhetoric in Dutch is rederijkerskunst, retoriek
rhetoric in German is Rhetorik, Redekunst
rhetoric in Swedish is retorik

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