"You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his"
"If decisions were a choice between alternatives, decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives."
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Source: Kenneth Burke (2005). “Here & Elsewhere: The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Burke”, p.146, David R. Godine Publisher
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"Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning."
"We not only interpret the character of events... we may also interpret our interpretations."
"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."
"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."
"A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing."