Aristotle The Art Of Rhetoric Quotes

What makes a man a 'sophist' is not his faculty, but his moral purpose. (1355b 17)

There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and

If there are two definitive features of ancient Greek civilization, they are loquacity and competition.

To say this, however, is not to claim that it was the object of theoretical study.

The peculiar circumstances arising out of the fall of the Syracusan tyranny seem to have produced the first practitioners of the art of rhetorical

rhetoric was to be surveyed from the standpoint of philosophy.

How can a man who, for a significant phase of his formation, shared his master’s opposition to rhetoric have in maturity composed a masterpiece of the formal study of rhetoric? This

the fact that it took the rise of democracies and otherwise open societies at Athens and elsewhere to create the climate in which public eloquence became a political indispensability.

logographos, a writer of speeches for others to use

The present work is, then, the masterpiece of one particular literary genre that flourished in the fourth century BC in Greece, that of the rhetorical manual, and it is a remarkable fact that it should have fallen to Aristotle to write it. It

It was at this point that the transition was first made to the conception that rhetoric was a teachable skill, that it could, usually in return for a fee, be passed from one skilled performer on to others, who might thereby achieve successes in their practical life that would otherwise have eluded them.

Fourth, it would make no sense for an inability to defend oneself by physical means to be a source of shame, while an inability to defend oneself by verbal means was not, since the use of words is more specifically human than the use of the body.

The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.

Rhetoric is the art of influence, friendship, and eloquence, of ready wit and irrefutable logic. And it harnesses the most powerful of social forces, argument.

É belo morrer antes de se fazer algo digno da morte. - Anaxândrias

Trusting people, the kind who are not on their guard and do not take precautions, because it is always easy to get away with wronging them.

And retaliation too is pleasant, because if failing at it is painful, succeeding at it is pleasant.

Conferring

Learning and wonder are also usually pleasant. For wonder is a form of desire† and so the object of one’s wonder is desirable, and learning is a form of restoring one’s natural condition.*

Honour and a good reputation are very pleasant, because the individual imagines himself a good man, and his estimation of his worth increases the more he can trust the people who are saying this about him —

If the pleasure is immediate and the pain distant, or if the profit is immediate and the punishment distant. This is the kind of thing that moves weak-willed people, and there is no human impulse that is not liable to moral weakness.

means of succeeding in the object we set before us. We must make as it were a fresh start, and before going further define what rhetoric is. Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy, geometry about the properties of magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us;

It’s a form of amplification, an essential rhetorical tactic that turns up the volume as you speak. In a presentation, you can amplify by layering your points: “Not only do we have this, but we also

Let us now turn to their circumstances and their victims. People do wrong, then, when they think that the deed can be done, and can be done by them — which is to say that they think either† (a) they can get away with it, or (b) that if they are caught they will avoid punishment, or (c) that if they are punished the penalty paid by themselves or those they care for will be less than their profits.

Moreover, since, in general, all those things which delight us when present usually do so also when we anticipate them or remember them, then even anger is pleasant, as Homer said in describing it as ‘sweeter by far than trickling honey’.* After all, people do not feel anger for those they think beyond the reach of retaliation, nor do they feel anger (or relatively little) for those who have far more power than them.

If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric; now, since politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since, again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be the good for man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in one sense of that term.

But people are most likely to think that they can do wrong without paying the penalty if they are good speakers or men of affairs or have wide experience of litigation, or if they have many friends, or if they are rich.

Frequently repeated action is pleasant because, as we saw, things that are familiar are pleasant. Change is also pleasant, because it restores one’s natural condition. For always doing the same thing creates an excess of one’s normal state. Hence the sentiment: ‘Change is ever sweet.’* That is also why people or things that one meets with only once in a while are pleasant: there is a change from the present, and besides anything that happens only once in a while has the value of being scarce.

But people are most likely to think that they can do wrong without paying the penalty if they are good speakers or men of affairs or have wide experience of litigation, or if they have many friends, or if they are rich. Their confidence is greatest if they fall into one of these categories themselves, but otherwise if they count these types among their friends, supporters, or accomplices. For these are the factors that enable them to carry out their crimes, avoid detection, and remain unpunished.

Since anything that accords with one’s nature is pleasant and being of the same kind is a natural relationship, then things that are of the same kind and resemble one another also usually please one another. So a human being pleases another human being, a horse a horse, a young man a young man. Hence the proverbs: ‘Youth delights in youth’, ‘Ever like to like’, ‘Beast knows beast’, ‘Birds of a feather flock together’, and so on. Since things that resemble oneself and are of the same kind as oneself are bound to afford one pleasure, and since every individual experiences these things above all in relation to himself, then we are all inevitably to a greater or lesser degree lovers of ourselves, seeing that we stand in these relationships primarily to ourselves. Since we are all lovers of ourselves, we are all bound to find pleasure in things that are our own — our own achievements and words, for instance. That is also why we are usually fond of flatterers, lovers, honour, and our children (who are our own achievements). And it is also pleasant to complete something unfinished, since then it immediately becomes one’s own achievement.

The first text book on the subject was Aristotle's Rhetoric which was written sometime between 322 and 320 B.C. In this book Aristotle defined rhetorical discourse "as the art of discovering all the available means of persuasion in any given case." During the Roman period great orators like Cicero and Quintilion also wrote some important books on the subject. They also agreed with Aristotle and defined rhetoric as the art of persuading an audience. At first it also included logic, that is, valid reasoning and the tricks or devices used in argument so as to produce intellectual and emotional effect on the audience in order to make them veer round the speaker's point of view. But today it means mostly the tricks.

But people are most likely to think that they can do wrong without paying the penalty if they are good speakers or men of affairs or have wide experience of litigation, or if they have many friends, or if they are rich. Their confidence is greatest if they fall into one of these categories themselves, but otherwise if they count these types among their friends, supporters, or accomplices. For these are the factors that enable them to carry out their crimes, avoid detection, and remain unpunished. Their confidence is also high if they are on good terms with the victims of their wrongdoing or with the judges. For friends take no precautions against being wronged by friends and would rather make up with them than prosecute; and judges are biased in favour of their friends, and either let them off scot-free or give them an exiguous penalty.

Hence, although the method of deliberative and forensic Rhetoric is the same, and although the pursuit of the former is nobler and more worthy of a statesman than that of the latter, which is limited to transactions between private citizens, they say nothing about the former, but without exception endeavor to bring forensic speaking under the rules of art. The reason of this is that in public speaking it is less worth while to talk of what is outside the subject, and that deliberative oratory lends itself to trickery less than forensic, because it is of more general interest. For in the assembly the judges decide upon their own affairs, so that the only thing necessary is to prove the truth of the statement of one who recommends a measure, but in the law courts this is not sufficient; there it is useful to win over the hearers, for the decision concerns other interests than those of the judges, who, having only themselves to consider and listening merely for their own pleasure, surrender to the pleaders but do not give a real decision.That is why, as I have said before, in many places the law prohibits speaking outside the subject in the law courts, whereas in the assembly the judges themselves take adequate precautions against this.

But Aristotle held a deeper interest for Boethius. With the knowledge of Greek steadily disappearing from western Europe, the need for a Latin version of Aristotle seemed more urgent. In fact, Boethius made it his life’s work. “I wish to translate the whole work of Aristotle,” Boethius wrote when he turned thirty. “Everything Aristotle wrote on the difficult art of logic, on the important realm of moral experience, and on the exact comprehension of natural objects, I shall translate in the correct order.”9 Boethius never finished the mammoth project he had set for himself (prison and death also interrupted his plans to translate Plato’s dialogues). Aristotle’s writings on politics, ethics, and rhetoric, along with his central work, the Metaphysics, had to wait another six centuries before they saw the light of day in the West.

Daniel Webster picked up rhetoric at Dartmouth by joining a debating society, the United Fraternity, which had an impressive classical library and held weekly debates. Years later, the club changed its name to Alpha Delta and partied its way to immortality by inspiring the movie Animal House. To the brothers’ credit, they didn’t forget their classical heritage entirely; hence the toga party.

At his most characteristic, medieval man was not a dreamer nor a wanderer. He was an organiser, a codifier, a builder of systems. He wanted 'a place for everything and everything in the right place'. Distinction, definition, tabulation were his delight. Though full of turbulent activities, he was equally full of the impulse to formalise them. War was (in intention) formalised by the art of heraldry and the rules of chivalry; sexual passion (in intention), by an elaborate code oflove. Highly original and soaring philosophical speculation squeezes itself into a rigid dialectical pattern copied from Aristotle. Studies like Law and Moral Theology, which demand the ordering of very diverse particulars, especially flourish. Every way in which a poet can write (including some in which he had much better not) is classified in the Arts of Rhetoric. There was nothing which medieval people liked better, or did better, than sorting out and tidying up. Of all our modem inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index.

Rhetoric has a name for debating that seeks to win points: eristic.

The supreme goal of all human action is happiness, and that all other objectives can be theoretically subsumed under quest or this.

The supreme goal of all human action is happiness, and that all other objectives can be theoretically subsumed under quest for this.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Aristotle

Preparing an artful and persuasive speech is a great deal of work. For me, kairos is also a matter of whether to speak at all. You shouldn’t speak if: you have nothing worth saying; you are unsure and keep changing your mind; you are not the best or most qualified person to speak on this subject; you are speaking out of some deep-seated grievance; you are speaking only or mostly to further your own interests; speaking won’t make a difference. In his Ethics, Aristotle says that the virtuous or great-souled man (megalopsychos) ought ‘to be sluggish and hold back except where great honour or a great work is at stake, and to be a man of few deeds, but of great and notable ones.’ Remember that speech is a divine instrument. When someone goes around giving lots of little, loud speeches, you can be sure that they are an idiot.