Rhetorically Quotes & Sayings

Religion - the wishful thinking of an ape that talks! You know what I think?" he asked rhetorically, trying to distract himself from yet another death. "Random shit happens, and we turn it into stories and call it sacred scripture - — Mary Doria Russell

However objective one's analytical approach may seem, [Some dude] argues, we must recognize the myth of objectivity as another rhetoric, another metadiscourse fashioning our sense of 'reality.' Although avant-gardism has long been believed to be a metafictional rhetoric displacing reality, we must not forget that it is a framework of reality that has been constructed rhetorically--whether its rhetoric is ontological or consumerist or creative-masochistic. — Takayuki Tatsumi

A week after his State of the Union address, political observers are still trying to figure out what President Obama's game is. That's because rhetorically and substantively, he seems to be in another world ... — Jonah Goldberg

Look at this existence. This pathetic, fallible, wonderful body," you can say rhetorically, sarcastically, or earnestly and still achieve death. Look at me falling in love with fallible bodies. Look at me performing emotional labor — Gabby Bess

It's the Queen's English now,' observed Peter mildly.

'Is there a difference?' asked Oundle rhetorically. 'I fervently hope not.'

'There will be in time,' said Peter.

'That will be deplorable,' replied Oudle. 'I shall not myself deviate by a syllable from correct usage.'

'My language is foul, and yours is Fowler?' said Peter, and added one of his sudden quirky smiles, 'or know your Onions.'

This quip crossed the barrier of the table, because the man sitting nearly opposite Peter laughed.

'Onions?' said Oudle.

'C.T. Onions, I imagine,' said the man opposite. 'Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.'

'Oh, I see,' said Oudle. 'Very droll. — Jill Paton Walsh

Have you ever seen a rabbit go to a pharmacy, a hospital, or a mental asylum?" he asks rhetorically. "They don't look for medicine, they heal themselves or die. Humans aren't so simple; they've let technology get in the way of who they really are." It's an idea that I've thought a lot about, and one that doesn't always sit comfortably. Yes the modern world has its drawbacks, but nature can also be brutal. So I interrupt the budding diatribe. "But rabbits get eaten by wolves," I say. Hof doesn't skip a beat at my interjection. "Yes, they know fight and flight. The wolf chases them and they die. But everything dies one day. It is just that in our case we aren't eaten by wolves. Instead, without predators, we're being eaten by cancer, by diabetes, and our own immune systems. There's no wolf to run from, so our bodies eat themselves. — Scott Carney

Why do the Fascists want violence?" Ethel asked rhetorically. "Those out there in Hills Road may be mere hooligans, but someone is directing them, and their tactics have a purpose. When there is fighting in the streets, they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are needed to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include banning democratic political parties such as Labour, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial - people such as us, peaceful men and women whose only crime is to disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, unlikely, something that could never happen? Well, they used exactly those tactics in Germany - and it worked." She went on to talk about how Fascism — Ken Follett

And suddenly they came out of the woodwork. I don't actually know what that expression means. What come out of the wood work? Cockroaches maybe. Mice? Are these rhetorical questions, like I just learned about on one of my rare visits to school? Was that a rhetorical question? Is it a paradox when you ask rhetorically if a rhetorical question is a rhetorical question? I think I'd better stop before I get a headache. — John Marsden

I think that what I do, in terms of how I craft my words rhetorically, is fairly simple stuff. I don't mean that to denigrate myself. I mean that in the sense of, when I write, the person that I keep in mind is my mother-in-law. — John Scalzi

Men confide, lust rhetorically, copulate hypothetically with women of unacknowledged fantasy. — Aleksandar Hemon

Hollywood loves to pat itself on the back and espouse their rhetorically liberal points of view while they continue to be the 1 percent and point the finger at the other guy. — Harry Lennix

In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always then. Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local candidates run without any party identification. No American citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political background, and commitments of each individual candidate. — Ben Bagdikian

The most recent estimate is that a mere 400 individuals in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 180 million Americans taken together -- a degree of wealth concentration that is accurately, not rhetorically, properly designated medieval. — Gar Alperovitz

There's always one, isn't there? Stryker asked rhetorically. In every house, there was always one malcontent jealous prick out to destroy everyone else just for spite. The entire history of the earth was written in the blood of those betrayed by the very people they'd foolishly trusted. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Could women's liberation ever be a revolutionary movement, not rhetorically but on the ground? — Andrea Dworkin

Daniel is asleep. A care assistant, a different one today is swishingaroundthe room with a mop that smells of pine cleaner.

Elisabeth wonders what's doing to happen to all the care assistants. She realizes she hasn't so far encountered a single care assistant here who isn't from somewhere else in the world. That morning on the radio she;d heard a spokesperson say, but it's not just that we;ve been rhetorically and practically encouraging the opposite of integration for immigrants to this country. It's that we've been rhetorically and practically encouraging ourselves not to integrate. We've been doing this as a matter of self-policing since Thatcher taught us to be selfish and not just to think but to believe that there's no such thing as society.

Then the other spokesperson in the dialogue said, well, you would say that. Get over it. Grow up. Your time's over. Democracy. You lost. — Ali Smith

You have to have an eye and a feeling for where things go. Writing visually, writing textually, writing sonically. Text is visual for me and images are textual. There is power in the way ideas are arranged, not just developed rhetorically. Form is everything. — Masha Tupitsyn

Why (he wondered rhetorically) do people who have a position that's being attacked constantly state that they have a right to say it, as if the right itself-rather than the statement-has been challenged? — Peter David

If one is going to change the definition of marriage to be, quote, 'same sex,' then there is absolutely no valid argument constitutionally or rhetorically you can make against multiple people getting married. These are radical social changes. — Gary Bauer

I assume that, as usual, he is asking this question rhetorically, so I say nothing so he'll go on ranting, because as painful as it is for me to admit, there is something kind of wonderful about Tiny's ranting, particularly on a quiet street when I am still half asleep. — John Green

What is life for?' he asked rhetorically. 'It's a way to evolve thought. And what is thought for? It's a way to be aware, a stage between the physical and the spiritual. And time? it's a good way to keep things separated. — Raymond E. Feist

What therefore is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a notion fixed, canonic, and binding; truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions; worn-out metaphors which have become powerless to affect the senses; coins which have their obverse effaced and now are no longer of account as coins but merely as metal. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What is a stromatolite? he asks rhetorically, his eyes gleaming. The word comes from the Greek stroma, a mattress, coupled with the root word for "stone." Stone mattress: a fossilized cushion, formed by layer upon layer of blue-green algae building up into a mound or dome. It was this very same blue-green algae that created the oxygen they are now breathing. Isn't that astonishing? — Margaret Atwood

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions - they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It's very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words 'heroes.' I feel ... uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. — Chris Hayes

Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed. — Clifford Geertz

After September 11, I wondered rhetorically midway through a column what we in the West are prepared to die for, and got a convoluted e-mail back from a French professor explaining that the fact that Europeans weren't prepared to die for anything was the best evidence of their superiority: they were building a post-historical utopia - a Europe it would not be necessary to die for. But sometimes you die anyway. — Mark Steyn

She doesn't even have shoes on" He was trying to reconcile something in his head while talking to Luke.
"In all the time you spent in that shack, you forgot to pack her shoes?" Luke asked rhetorically, shaking his head in both wonder and disappointment. "Look, we're in the boonies. I am sure shoes are optional, as are a full set of teeth. — Jenna-Lynne Duncan

Horror grows impatient, rhetorically, with the Stoic fatalism of Ecclesiastes. That we are all going to die, that death mocks and cancels every one of our acts and attainments and every moment of our life histories, this knowledge is to storytelling what rust is to oxidation; the writer of horror holds with those who favor fire. The horror writer is not content to report on death as the universal system of human weather; he or she chases tornadoes. Horror is Stoicism with a taste for spectacle. — Michael Chabon

I had been granted unusual freedom and responsibility at an early age, for which I should have been grateful in the extreme, but I wasn't. Instead, I felt oppressed by the old man's expectations. It was drilled into me that anything less than winning was failure. In the impressionable way of sons, I did not consider this rhetorically; I took him at his word. And that's why later, when long-held family secrets came to light, when I noticed that this deity who asked only for perfection was himself less than perfect, that he was in fact not a deity at all - well, I wasn't able to shrug it off. I was consumed instead by a blinding rage. The revelation that he was merely human, and frightfully so, was beyond my power to forgive. Two — Jon Krakauer

We were all tired after hiking and were half asleep, sitting in a semicircle around the fireplace in the cabin, wearing big sweaters and woolen socks. The only sounds you could hear were the stew boiling, the sparks from the fireplace, and someone having a sip of mulled wine. Then one of my friends broke the silence. "Could this be any more hygge?" he asked rhetorically. "Yes," one of the women said after a moment. "If there was a storm raging outside." We all nodded. — Meik Wiking

I was soon drawn to the Republican Party because I realized that it truly, not just rhetorically, believed in equality. — Alphonso Jackson

I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don't want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that's fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I'm wrong about that. — Chris Hayes

What ever happened to mental hygiene?" he asked rhetorically. "It doesn't exist - and never did. When you went through high school, you were never taught how to deal with stress, how to deal with trauma, how to deal with tension and anxiety - with the whole list of mood impairments. There's no preventive maintenance. We know how to prevent cavities. But we don't teach children how to be resilient, how to cope with stress on a daily basis. — William J. Broad

Ignoring men, whether romantically or rhetorically, is existential violence to them. — Jessica Valenti

The Bishop goes on to the human eye, asking rhetorically, and with the implication that there is no answer, 'How could an organ so complex evolve?' This is not an argument, it is simply an affirmation of incredulity. — Richard Dawkins

A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument, absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically, critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

What?" he demanded testily.
Trammell raised his eyebrows. "I didn't say anything."
"You're thinking something, though. You've got that shit-eating smirk on your face."
"Why would anyone smirk while they eat shit?" Trammell asked rhetorically. — Linda Howard

Paul Davies takes us on a logically and rhetorically compelling modern search for human agency. This outstanding analysis, well informed by naturalistic views of our evolved affective nature, is the kind of philosophical work that is essential for a field to move forward when ever-increasing findings from modern science are inconsistent with traditional philosophical arguments. This book is for all who wish to immerse themselves in the modern search for free will. It is steeped in the rich liqueur of current scientific and philosophical perspectives and delusions. — Jaak Panksepp

What," asked Mr Croup, "do you want?"
"What," asked the Marquis de Carabas, a little more rhetorically, "does anyone want?"
"Dead things," suggested Mr Vandemar. "Extra teeth. — Neil Gaiman

I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in. — Bruce Springsteen

Rhetorically, President Obama is a champion of bipartisanship. In practice, though, he is almost always its enemy. — Reince Priebus