Quotes for All
Evolution as described by Charles Darwin is an scientific theory, abundantly reconfirmed, explaining physical phenomena by physical causes. Intelligent Design is a faith-based initiative in rhetorical argument. Should we teach I.D. in America’s public schools? Yes, let’s do – not as science, but alongside other spiritual beliefs, such as Islam, Zoroastrianism and the Hindu Idea … Read more
Postmodernism – and is that term used much any more? – is simply a reiteration of the sophistic or the rhetorical worldview. David Roochnik
All rhetorical questions are accusations. David Mamet
I’d finished the first two [books] and they were going to to be published, and [editor] said, We need you to write a summary that will drive people to these books. And it took forever. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I looked at the back of other children’s books that were full … Read more
A common rhetorical strategy of politicians and others is to frame their opponents’ views in the worst possible light, tacitly suggesting that all versions of the view must be committed to some particularly deplorable conclusion. Philosophers are not immune to this way of arguing. Dale Jamieson
So there are all kinds of things that grammarian purists would argue are awkward forms of speech and sometimes they are intentional for rhetorical effect and sometimes it’s the way people chose to write at the time. Inerrancy isn’t interested in any of those kinds of things. D. A. Carson
Not all Scripture is propositional, some of it is asking questions, some of it’s rhetorical, but where Scripture is stating something, asserting something, making a truth claim, uttering a proposition that is claiming to be true, it is the truth. D. A. Carson
Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice. Yet the passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason. Constance Hale
Chomsky proceeds on the almost unthinkably subversive assumption that the United States should be judged by the same standards that it preaches (often at gunpoint) to other nations he is nearly the only person now writing who assumes a single standard of international morality not for rhetorical effect, but as a matter of habitual, practically … Read more
French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisan intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the … Read more