In any piece of rhetorical discourse, one rhetorical term overcomes another rhetorical term only by being nearer to the term which stands ultimate. There is some ground for calling a rhetorical education necessarily aristocratic education in that the rhetorician has to deal with an aristocracy of notions.
Richard M. WeaverRespecters of private property are really obligated to oppose much that is done today in the name of private enterprise, for corporate organization and monopoly are the very means whereby property is casting aside its privacy.
Richard M. WeaverBeneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, [Plato's Phaedrus] is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and provoking an expense of spirit.
Richard M. WeaverThe man of culture finds the whole past relevant; the bourgeois and the barbarian find relevant only what has some pressing connection with their appetite.
Richard M. WeaverThe case of the Baconians is not won until it has been proved that the substitution of covetousness for wantlessness, or an ascending spiral of desires for a stable requirement of necessities, leads to a happier condition.
Richard M. WeaverMany of us who read the literature of social science as laymen are conscious of being admitted at a door which bears the watchword "scientific objectivity" and of emerging at another door which looks out upon a variety of projects for changing, renovating, or revolutionizing society. In consequence, we feel the need of a more explicit account of how the student of society passes from facts to values or statements of policy.
Richard M. Weaver