Points of Praxis

My Blog Reflects on Visual Rhetorical Theory and Disability Rhetoric and their Connections to Classical and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

Some other quotations of notable interest to rhetoricians--particularly those studying for comprehensive exams: 

"Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic.  It is the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion."--Aristotle

"Rhetoric is one great art comprised of five lesser arts:  inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio.  It is speech designed to persuade."--Cicero

"Rhetoric is the science of speaking well, the education of the Roman gentleman, both useful and a virtue."--Quintilian

"Rhetoric is the art of expressing clearly, ornately (where necessary), persuasively, and fully the truths which thought has discovered acutely."--St. Augustine

"Rhetoric is the application of reason to imagination for the better moving of the will.  It is not solid reasoning of the kind science exhibits."--Francis Bacon

"Rhetoric is that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end.  All the ends of speaking are reducible to four; every speech being intended to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, and to influence the will."--George Campbell

“Rhetoric is not so much a practical art as a speculative science; and the same instructions which assist others in composing will assist them in judging of, and relishing, the beauties of composition.”  --Hugh Blair

"Rhetoric is the study of misunderstandings and their remedies."--I.A. Richards

"Rhetoric is that which creates an informed appetite for the good."--Richard Weaver

"Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew:  the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols." [emphasis mine] --Kenneth Burke

"Rhetoric is the art of discovering warrantable beliefs and improving those beliefs in shared discourse...the art of probing what we believe we ought to believe, rather than proving what is true according to abstract methods."--Wayne Booth

"Rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action."--Lloyd Bitzer

"We should not neglect rhetoric's importance, as if it were simply a formal structure or technique exterior to the essential activity.  Rhetoric is something decisive in society...[T]here are no politics, there is no society without rhetoric, without the force of rhetoric."--Jacques Derrida

"Rhetoric is the art, practice, and study of [all] human communication."--Andrea Lundsford

"Rhetoric appears as the connective tissue peculiar to civil society and to its proper finalities, happiness and political peace hic et nunc."--Marc Fumaroli

I will continue to add to these as I come across them.  And, thank you, Wayne Booth, for this handy, starter compilation.  (Booth, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric.)

posted by: rgregory at 16:59 | link | comments (2) |

Comments:

#1  03 November 2006 - 22:36

 

Love it. Thanks, Rochelle. I think Burke's is interesting especially. (As do you, apparently!)

BB

Mo'nonymous

#2  18 November 2006 - 09:14

 

I will be checking in---have been talking about classical rhetoric--declamatio etc.---with my students of late.

Mo'nonymous

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