"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"
"Man is/the symbol-using (symbol making, symbol-misusing) animal/inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)/separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making/goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order)/and rotten with perfection."
43 likes
Source: Kenneth Burke (1973). “Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature and Method”, p.16, Univ of California Press
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Kenneth Burke
"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."