Political Rhetoric Quotes & Sayings

People are angry that things as common sense as securing the border and eliminating sanctuary cities are being framed as extreme views. They are tired of empty rhetoric without action, and they are hungry for a leader from outside the professional political class. — Carly Fiorina

Dreams became issues of East versus West. Hopes became political rhetoric. Progress became a search for power and domination. Somewhere the truth was lost that people don't make war, governments do. — Ronald Reagan

Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth - that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric. — Michael Crichton

There is no regard for human lives, or local national interests. It is because the West, despite its hypocritical rhetoric (political correctness) does not really consider non-whites and non-Christians as human beings. — Andre Vltchek

One sees a trend in our political and legal cultures toward treating religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant, a trend supported by a rhetoric that implies that there is something wrong with religious devotion. — Stephen L. Carter

I think we're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional.
We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy.
They're not a decade old, and they're being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they're being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about.
It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it. — Thomas Sowell

A campaign ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate. That means your First Amendment rights end at the tip of your opponent's nose - even in the matter of political rhetoric. — Mike Pence

This political climate today reminds me of what my father must have gone through in 1942, when the winds of war and fires of hate were surrounding him. We have a candidate for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, using the same rhetoric that my father must have heard from elected officials. — George Takei

A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Early in "Postulates of Linguistics," Deleuze and Guattari claim that, "the elementary unit of language ... is the order-word," which "not to be believe but to be obeyed" (ATP, 76). Perhaps the starkest example is the judge's sentence that condemns a criminal to death (80-81; 94). But the French for order-word, mot d'ordre, also refers to the political slogan, which is substantiated by Deleuze and Guattari's reference to Lenin's pamphlet "On Slogans" (83). Both of these examples indicate how closely their linguistics aligns with the rhetorical theory of symbolic action. Rhetoric is excellent at studying those acts that cause incorporeal transformations, which as changes in a state of affairs that do not directly alter its materiality (80-88). — Anonymous

I still think people like to hear from someone's heart and how they really feel than the old political rhetoric trying to not say the wrong thing because how would it look, would they get votes, lose votes. — Joe Arpaio

The FfP uses twelve indicators to measure state failure, and Egypt scored a stellar nine out of ten in criminalization or delegitimization of the state, understood as "massive and endemic corruption or profiteering by ruling elites, resistance of ruling elites to transparency, accountability and political representation, widespread loss of popular confidence in state institutions, and processes and growth of crime syndicates linked to ruling elites." It rated 8.5 out of ten in "suspension or arbitrary application of the rule of law and widespread violation of human rights." And it rated a relatively modest 8.3 in the "rise of factionalized elites" or the "fragmentation of elites and state institutions along group lines," and the use of "nationalistic political rhetoric by ruling elites. — John R. Bradley

The force of what was called Panther rhetoric or word mongering resided not in elegant discourse but in strength of affirmation (or denial), in anger of tone and timbre. When the anger led to action there was no turgidity or over-emphasis. Anyone who has witnessed political rows among the Whites will have to admit that the Whites aren't overburdened with poetic imagination. — Jean Genet

False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction. — Vladimir Lenin

British diplomats, constantly exposed to American political-ethical rhetoric, find their professional skills tested to the limits by the need to keep a straight face. For illustrations of what I mean, study the photographs of the expressions worn by Mr Douglas Hurd at any international conference involving all the Western allies. — Conor Cruise O'Brien

Every human being deserves something better than having their lives dismissed in a flood of simplistic rhetoric, posturing and crass political point-scoring. — Munjed Al Muderis

Given his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan, I think I myself, our commanders, and our troops had expected more commitment to the cause and more passion for it from him. ...I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission." Pg. 299 — Robert M. Gates

What black men, women, children did in Albany at that time was heroic. They overcame a century of passivity, and they did it without the help of the national government. They learned that despite the Constitution, despite the promises, despite the political rhetoric of the government, whatever they accomplished in the future would have to come from them. — Howard Zinn

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

The question is, how do I balance narratives that are wonderful with narratives of wounds and self-loathing? And this is the difficulty that I face. I am trying to move beyond political rhetoric to a place of ethical questioning. I am asking us to balance the idea of our complete vulnerability with the complete notion of transformation or what is possible. — Chris Abani

Political elites look increasingly interchangeable: Blair, Brown, and Cameron have all tried to provide cover for the surrender of sovereignty to foreign investors with invocations of 'British' values, and, more opportunistically, anti-immigrant rhetoric. — Pankaj Mishra

Drug use, once considered a private, public-health matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a grave threat to the national order. Jimmie Reeves and Richard Campbell show in their research how the media imagery surrounding cocaine changed as the practice of smoking cocaine came to be associated with poor blacks.35 — Michelle Alexander

Without the changed conditions, the product of a lost war, a revolution and a pervasive sense of national humiliation, Hitler would have remained a nobody. His main ability by far, as he came to realise during the course of 1919, was that in the prevailing circumstances he could inspire an audience which shared his basic political feelings, by the way he spoke, by the force of his rhetoric, by the very power of his prejudice, by the conviction he conveyed that there was a way out of Germany's plight. — Ian Kershaw

Politics is still crucially important. Our choices are vital, and we've got to make them, and not just say, 'Oh, they're all the same.' They are all the same in certain ways, alas - a political animal is such an animal. But lurking somewhere behind their rhetoric and their spittle are important choices that we should make. — Dennis Potter

The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends ... the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents. — Kenneth Burke

We know, for instance, that Americans have forcefully resisted extending the right to vote; those in power have disenfranchised blacks, women, and the poor in myriad ways. We know, too, that women historically have had fewer civil protections than corporations. Instead of a thoroughgoing democracy, Americans have settled for democratic stagecraft: high-sounding rhetoric, magnified, and political leaders dressing down at barbecues or heading out to hunt game. — Nancy Isenberg

ISIS is a terrorist entity whose barbarities have been condemned by all those who value our common humanity. In the current political climate, when hate crimes are rising and political rhetoric is increasingly divisive, this is all the more shocking. — Jonathan Sacks

Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. — Thomas Sowell

Humans and their governments have effectively neutered the population to the point that they're just skinbags, mouth-breathers and pseudo-intellectuals repeating political, religious or academic rhetoric that they don't even understand! — Brad McKinniss

I'm fully aware of the intense political pressures bearing down on education. The policies through which these pressures exert themselves must be challenged and changed. Part of my appeal (as it were) is to policymakers themselves to embrace the need for radical change. But revolutions don't wait for legislation. They emerge from what people do at the ground level. Education doesn't happen in the committee rooms of the legislatures or in the rhetoric of politicians. It's what goes on between learners and teachers in actual schools. If you're a teacher, for your students you are the system. If you're a school principal, for your community you are the system. If you're a policymaker, for the schools you control you are the system. — Ken Robinson

I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to make the show, and that it is in alignment with what I'm interested in, with what I read about. For me, it just felt like an organic step - of course, I'm thinking I want a show that allows for more representation for the community and shows the struggles people face, especially when we're hearing all this political rhetoric - to have a way to show how much this affects people lives. — Ellen Page

According to our textbook rhetoric, Americans abhor the notion of a social order in which economic privilege and political power are determined by hereditary class. Officially, we have a more enlightened goal in sight: namely, a society in which a family's wealth has no relation to the probability of future educational attainment and the wealth and station it affords. By this standard, education offered to poor children should be at least as good as that which is provided to the children of the upper-middle class. — Jonathan Kozol

Yeah, about the test ...
The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged, and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football, and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you'll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric, and whether you'll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, will make your life yours. And everything, everything, will be on it.
... I know, right? — John Green

As the U.S., much of Europe, and the U.K. shift toward the political right, the rhetoric grows more insular, defensive, and protective. — Samantha Harvey

What is called "planning" in political rhetoric is the government's suppression of other people's plans by superimposing on them a collective plan, created by third parties, armed with the power of government and exempted from paying the costs that these collective plans impose on others. — Thomas Sowell

Traffic will not yield to our will, neither will global finances, the environment, political rhetoric, nor people in general. There is no way to solve the problem of stress through blaming environmental factors. — Gudjon Bergmann

I think the process of being hopeful, being really opportunity oriented, not just in rhetoric but in action, showing that no one get's left behind, not just by talking about it but by doing it, I think is really a key [to political success]. — John Kasich

In every conflict, some rhetoric and posturing, so we should take that aside. When facts is that everybody is exhausted and that no one believes that there is a military solution to this. The solution must be a political one. — Staffan De Mistura

Political rhetoric leads only to confusion. — Tariq Ramadan

More non-fringe, non-radical homosexuals emerge into public view every day. As the stereotype of the homosexual as antisocial deviant crumbles, a (political) party or faction that tolerates gay-baiting rhetoric in the name of 'family values' makes 'family values' look more and more like common bigotry. — Jonathan Rauch

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

Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on into micro-managing automobile companies and medical care. They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence. — Thomas Sowell

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

The American people want to pay attention to serious ideas again. Our founding was built by people who were political philosophers, and we need to get back to that, away from this kind of cheap political rhetoric of Right and Left. — Dave Brat

The Communist Manifesto as political rhetoric has an almost biblical force. — Eric Hobsbawm

It advances Democracy": As it was throughout the Cold War, the response here should be "Democracy for whom?" "Democracy" has never been a univocal concept; and as a word, it has surely by now been degraded by so many reactionary projects, such as U.S. imperialism itself and the various middle class comprador movements that have furthered its purposes through coups and color revolutions. It is not the nominal political form aspired to, but the social goods that are being sought, that should weigh our evaluations of those who use such rhetoric. — Anonymous

Political rhetoric alone does not build a nation unless it is backed by the power of sacrifice, toil and virtue. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Republican strategist Kevin Phillips is often credited for offering the most influential argument in favor of a race-based strategy for Republican political dominance in the South. He argued in The Emerging Republican Majority, published in 1969, that Nixon's successful presidential election campaign could point the way toward long-term political realignment and the building of a new Republican majority, if Republicans continued to campaign primarily on the basis of racial issues, using coded antiblack rhetoric.54 He argued that Southern white Democrats had become so angered and alienated by the Democratic Party's support for civil rights reforms, such as desegregation and busing, that those voters could be easily persuaded to switch parties if those racial resentments could be maintained. — Michelle Alexander

The military-industrial complex corporations never complain of higher prices for bombs, planes, drones, and missiles. They benefit when prices rise and when cost overruns are covered with more money from the US Treasury. Those who profit are the greatest champions of the military readiness and armed conflict. They are represented by lobbyists who greatly influence both political parties. Corporate war profits and high union wages bring about remarkable cooperation between the two parties despite the political rhetoric suggesting passionate disagreement. And these militaristic policies are defended with patriotic zeal, and in appeals regarding our moral obligation to take care of all the world's needs and to meet our obligation to spread our "goodness" around the world. — Ron Paul

The political environment we create matters because a disturbed person cannot always tell the difference between explosive rhetoric and explosive actions. — Madeleine M. Kunin

If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries. — Alan Greenspan

Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact. — Thomas Sowell

[It is not] the poet's business to use verse as an advanced form of rhetoric, nor to give to political statements the aura of eternal truth. — George Oppen

the vile political rhetoric that has been ongoing in the USA for the past few years has made me doubt my reasons for becoming a U.S. citizen a few times - but not enough to change my mind. Despite what the world may think of America, the truth is that more people want to get in than want to get out. — Gudjon Bergmann

Americans tend not to distinguish between political rhetoric and real intentions, which can lead to great misunderstanding. — Hooman Majd

The last generation's Religious Right activism was, to the contrary, the exact opposite, affirming and reaffirming that they were not a theological movement but a political one. The tent was broad enough to include evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Jews, and even socially conservative agnostics and atheists.7 The rhetoric was focused much less on the kingdom of God or on the gospel of Christ than on "traditional family values" or "our Judeo-Christian heritage. — Russell D. Moore

These are the three things - volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm - that a speaker bears in mind. It is those who do bear them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests; and just as in drama the actors now count for more than the poets, so it is in the contests of public life, owing to the defects of our political institutions. — Aristotle.

Tolerance has come to mean that no one is right and no one is wrong and, indeed, the very act of stating that someone else's views are immoral or incorrect is now taken to be intolerant (of course, from this same point of view, it is all right to be intolerant of those who hold to objectively true moral or religious positions). Once the existence of knowable truth in religion and ethics is denied, authority (the right to be believed and obeyed) gives way to power (the ability to force compliance), reason gives way to rhetoric, the speech writer is replaced by the makeup man, and spirited but civil debate in the culture wars is replaced by politically correct special-interest groups who have nothing left but political coercion to enforce their views on others. — J.P. Moreland

Girl power reduces the theoretical complexity of feminism to a cheery slogan ("GIRLS KICK ASS!"); it represents the ultimate commodification of empowerment; it reinforces the simplistic conception of feminism as being, at heart, "all about choices." But most of all, it it grabbed the rhetoric from one of the most potentially powerful, yet woefully misunderstood, feminist uprisings of my generation, discarded every ounce of political heft, and reduced it to cheap iron-on letters on a baby T. — Rachel Fudge

The Greeks who rhapsodized about democracy in their rhetoric rarely created democratic institutions. A few cities such as Athens occasionally attempted a system vaguely akin to democracy for a few years. These cities functioned as slave societies and were certainly not egalitarian or democratic in the Indian sense. — Jack Weatherford

However little president Obama knows or cares about economics, he knows a lot about politics - and especially political rhetoric. 'High-speed rail' is simply another set of loft words to justify continued expansion of government spending. So are words like 'investment in education' or 'investment' in any number of other things, which serves the same political purpose. — Thomas Sowell

Maybe it's low-wage work in general that has the effect of making feel like a pariah. When I watch TV over my dinner at night, I see a world in which almost everyone makes $15 an hour or more, and I'm not just thinking of the anchor folks. The sitcoms and dramas are about fashion designers or schoolteachers or lawyers, so it's easy for a fast-food worker or nurse's aide to conclude that she is an anomaly - the only one, or almost the only one, who hasn't been invited to the party. And in a sense she would be right: the poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors as well as from its daily entertainment. Even religion seems to have little to say about the plight of the poor, if that tent revival was a fair sample. The moneylenders have finally gotten Jesus out of the temple. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good ... — Milan Kundera

He, too, was in the grip of rage and rhetoric. I saw that, attractive though his side of the political spectrum was. A cancerous violence had eaten into every political idea, had taken over the ideas themselves, and for so many, all that mattered was the willingness to do something. Action led to action, free of any moorings, and the way to be someone, the way to catch the attention of the young and recruit them to one's cause, was to be enraged. It seemed as if the only way this lure of violence could be avoided was by having no causes, by being magnificiently isolated from loyalties. But was that not an ethical lapse graver than rage itself? — Teju Cole

In all societies, public rhetoric involves some measure of lying, and history -- political history and art history -- is made when someone effectively confronts the lie. But in really scary societies all public conversation is an exercise in using words to mean their opposites -- in describing the brave as traitorous, the weak as frightening, and the good as bad -- and confronting these lies is the most scary and lonely thing a person can do. — Masha Gessen

Liberals need to take the advice they routinely give to conservatives: that there are consequences to their divisive rhetoric, and that in their attempts to score political points, they are also inciting violence. — Gary Bauer

Anyone who has lived here for long enough has seen it all before: opposing sides of the political spectrum ferociously criticising each other, getting hot under the collar about this and that, bringing up all sorts of allegations and innuendos. Then just as it looks as if the argument is about to get physical, harmony breaks out. A dialogue is opened, an accord or a compromise is found. And suddenly, just as quickly as it came, all that fiery rhetoric subsides and everyone realizes it was all synthetic, put on for show when all along some deal was imminent anyway. It's as if every politician is merely an actor in a little theatre, and as soon as the curtain falls and the public can't see them any more they all slap each other on the back, tot up the takings and go out for an expensive meal. — Tobias Jones

I believe all Americans need to start taking more responsibility for the kind of extreme rhetoric that is permeating our political culture; otherwise, quite frankly, as a country we're screwed. — Meghan McCain

It is said that the price of freedom is vigilance, and an important form of vigilance is attention to political rhetoric, which often reveals how things are going. — Kenneth Minogue

There is no gay leader anywhere near the stature of Martin Luther King, because black activism drew on the profound spiritual tradition of the church, to which gay political rhetoric is childishly hostile. — Camille Paglia

Vision is not political rhetoric. — Jean Chretien

Unquestionably, American political rhetoric can be repugnant, and the Right can certainly be as guilty as the Left. — John Podhoretz

[On political correctness:] Any intended message mattered less than the received message, and every received message could be interpreted in whatever way the receiver wanted. — Chuck Klosterman

As in 1925, creationists are not battling for religion. They have been disowned by leading church men of all persuasions, for they debase religion even more than they misconstrue science. They are a motley collection to be sure, but their core of practical support lies with the evangelical right, and creationism is a mere stalking horse or subsidiary issue in a political program ... The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the 'liberal' rhetoric of 'equal time'. — Stephen Jay Gould

Being Muslim has become synonymous with pointed questions, with tension and mistrust, even with conflict. It has become a global phenomenon with profound consequences for inter-communal relations, political rhetoric and policies at the local, regional, national and international level. — Tariq Ramadan

Law and order is a social service. Crime and the fear which the threat of crime induces can paralyse whole communities, keep lonely and vulnerable elderly people shut up in their homes, scar young lives and raise to cult status the swaggering violent bully who achieves predatory control over the streets. I suspect that there would be more support and less criticism than today's political leaders imagine for a large shift of resources from Social Security benefits to law and order - as long as rhetoric about getting tough on crime was matched by practice. — Margaret Thatcher

Without black youth and their advocates being willing and able to tell their stories, communicate their perspectives, and detail a political agenda that addresses their wants and desires, we are left with silent black bodies of these vulnerable and marginalized young people being deployed to support the very rhetoric that seeks to criminalize, victimize, pathologize, and quarantine them. — Cathy J. Cohen