Rhetoric completes the tools of learning. Dialectic zeros in on the logic of things, of particular systems of thought or subjects. Rhetoric takes the next grand step and brings all these subjects together into one whole.
~ William Blake
The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.
~ Edwin H. Friedman
The passions are the only orators who always convince. They have a kind of natural art with infallible rules; and the most untutored man filled with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without.
~ Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld
