Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality.

Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.

The progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken.

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.

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.

Language does our thinking for us.

Dignity belongs to the conquered.