Rhetorical Weapon Quotes

Both sides' was a rhetorical weapon used by hypocrites and the ignorant. ~ F.C. Yee

Suddenly Vasya understood why the women all begged him for prayers; understood, too, that his warm hand, the strong bones of his face, were a weapon, to use where the weapons of speech had failed. He would get her obedience thus, with his rough hands, his beautiful eyes. ~ Katherine Arden

There isn't going to be any big sting operation to catch people breaking the new law; they just want to meddle, and have another weapon to use against people who are more successful than they 'should be'. ~ J. Trevor Robinson

Drizzt swung a long and heavy halberd, a polearm more than twice his height, in a slow arc. For all of Drizzt's attempts to keep the weapon under control, its momentum spun his tiny frame right to the ground. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Once, long years ago, I thought I could set a canoe-load of my people free by breaking the bands at my wrists and killing the white man who held the weapon. I had the strength in my hands to do such a deed and I had the fire within, but I didn't do it."
"What held you back?"
Amos shook his head. "My hand was restrained and I'm glad that it was, for the years between have shown me that it does a man no good to be free until he knows how to live, how to walk in step with God. ~ Elizabeth Yates

Anger had its place, it was a weapon not to be neglected, but so did patience, and Nona decided that control lay in deciding which to use and when. She ~ Mark Lawrence

Do you have a weapon for me, or do you want me to beat her to death with a large stick? - Mr Bliss ~ Derek Landy

How can a warrior fight without his weapon? ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A secret is a weapon and a friend. ~ James Stephens

Death has an opposite, but the opposite is not mere living. It is not courage or faith or human will. The opposite of death is love. How had I missed that? How does anyone miss that? Love is our only weapon. Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear ~ Nando Parrado

The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful ~ John Legend

Any sufficiently advanced lingerie is indistinguishable from a lethal weapon. ~ Charles Stross

My weapon is literature
~ Chinua Achebe

The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever seen that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. 'Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in the back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off, I've got the toe clippers right here. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

You know who you remind me of? The kid cop in Lethal Weapon 3. You know, the one who says, 'it's my twenty-first birthday today', and right away you know he's dead meat? ~ Jennifer Crusie

DeBlass's eyes darted left and right. His breathing grew hard and fast.
"My client does not acknowledge ownership of the weapon in question."
"Your client's scum."
The lawyer puffed up. "Lieutenant Dallas, you're speaking of a United States Senator."
"That makes him elected scum. ~ J.D. Robb

My weapon of choice is the nunchuck. I do like the bo as well, which I use, the staff. I'm not so good with the sword, but I picked a lot of stuff up on 'Ninja 1' with the sword. ~ Scott Adkins

Fear, they had come to realize, not machines, is the most powerful weapon there is. ~ Laekan Zea Kemp

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth. ~ George Santayana

As long as there is life, my dear friends, laughter will be the weapon of we who mock it even as we struggle to understand it. ~ George Herman

In the liberal remake of 'Casablanca,' the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to 'round up the usual weapons.' It's always the weapon and never the shooter. ~ Charles Krauthammer

Be prepared. You're up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it's all over but the shouting you'll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You'll need them throughout your life. God's Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

He had a Kalashnikov, the universal weapon of all budget warriors, ~ Claire North

Historically, American liberals have been idealists, pressing forward toward the goals of greater freedom, social equality, and more meaningful democracy. The articulate exposition of a liberal ideology was necessary to convert others to liberal ideas and to reform existing institutions continuously along liberal lines. Today, however, the greatest need is not so much the creation of more liberal institutions as the successful defense of those which already exist. This defense requires American liberals to lay aside their liberal ideology and to accept the values of conservatism for the duration of the threat. Only by surrendering their liberal ideas for the present can liberals successfully defend their liberal institutions for the future. Liberals should not fear this change. Is a liberal any less liberal because he adjusts his thinking so as to defend most effectively the most liberal institutions in the world? To continue to expound the philosophy of liberalism simply gives the enemy a weapon with which to attack the society of liberalism. The defense of American institutions requires a conscious articulate conservatism which can spring only from liberals deeply concerned with the preservation of those institutions. As Boorstin, Niebuhr, and others have pointed out, the American political genius is manifest not in our ideas but in our institutions. The stimulus to conservatism comes not from the outworn creeds of third-rate thinkers but from the successful performance of ~ Samuel P. Huntington

You are dealing with national security. Anything labeled a national security issie is taken out from the system. There is no due process, no lawyers. They may do with us what they wish. Fear is a government's greatest weapon. With it, they can convince a people that they need to abandon their freedom. In exchange, they get safety. Of course, you just trade one monster for another, but by the time the people realize this, it is too late.
Excerpt from Superhero. ~ Victor Methos

BLACKBERRY. Also know as "Crackberry" for it's addictive qualities. It is the modern girl's weapon. It allow her to bid on ebay while walking down the street, map out her shopping route for maximum productivity, and sneak out of work and still get her messages as she peruses the sales racks ... ~ Nina Garcia

Over the last years we've seen the consequences of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy. Leading from behind is a disaster. We have abandoned and alienated our friends and allies, and our enemies are stronger. Radical Islam is on the rise, Iran's on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, China is waging cyber warfare against America. ~ Ted Cruz

A spare.
That's all I ever was, I realize. A spare part kept in captivity. A backup weapon in the case that all else failed.
Shatter me.
Break glass in case of emergency. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Next week is Beltane," she reminded him. "Do you suppose we will make it through the wedding this time?"
"Not if Gideon says you cannot get out of this bed," he countered sternly.
"Absolutely not!" she burst out, making him wince and cover the ear she'd been too close to. She immediately regretted her thoughtlessness, making a sad sound before reaching to kiss the ear she had offended with quiet gentleness.
Jacob extricated himself from her hold enough to allow himself to turn and face her.
"Okay, explain what you meant," he said gently.
"I refuse to wait another six months. We are getting married on Beltane, come hell or . . . necromancers . . . or . . . the creature from the Black Lagoon. There is no way Corrine is going to be allowed to get married without me getting married, too. I refuse to listen to her calling me the family hussy for the rest of the year."
"What does it matter what she says?" Jacob sighed as he reached to touch the soft contours of her face. "You and I are bonded in a way that transcends marriage already. Is that not what is important?"
"No. What's important is the fact that I am going to murder the sister I love if she doesn't quit. And she will not quit until I shut her up either with a marriage or a murder weapon. Understand?"
Clearly, by his expression, Jacob did not understand.
"Thank Destiny all I have is a brother," he said dryly. "I have been inundated with people tied into knots over one sister or a ~ Jacquelyn Frank

Do you know how to mix our powers?' I asked.

Carter's shoes squished in the mud. 'Well … not exactly.'

'Oh, please,' Sadie said. 'That's easy. Carter, give your wand to Percy.'

'Why?'

'Just do it, brother dear. Annabeth, do you remember when we fought Serapis?'

'Right!' Annabeth's eyes lit up. 'I grabbed Sadie's wand and it turned into a Celestial bronze dagger, just like my old one. It was able to destroy Serapis's staff. Maybe we can create another Greek weapon from an Egyptian wand. Good idea, Sadie.'

'Cheers. You see, I don't need to spend hours planning and researching to be brilliant. Now, Carter, if you please. ~ Rick Riordan

The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. "The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism. "Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self. "No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue. ~ Ayn Rand

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~ Robert Fulghum

Though they have things in common, good writing and talented writing are not the same.
[…]
If you start with a confused, unclear, and badly written story, and apply the rules of good writing to it, you can probably turn it into a simple, logical, clearly written story. It will still not be a good one. The major fault of eighty-five to ninety-five percent of all fiction is that it is banal and dull.
Now old stories can always be told with new language. You can even add new characters to them; you can use them to dramatize new ideas. But eventually even the new language, characters, and ideas lose their ability to invigorate.
Either in content or in style, in subject matter or in rhetorical approach, fiction that is too much like other fiction is bad by definition. However paradoxical it sounds, good writing as a set of strictures (that is, when the writing is good and nothing more) produces most bad fiction. On one level or another, the realization of this is finally what turns most writers away from writing.
Talented writing is, however, something else. You need talent to write fiction.
Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - vividly, forcefully - that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn't. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. ~ Donna J. Haraway

Because anything I give away is a weapon that can be used against me. But when you're close... I want to have things I never knew I needed. And I want to give parts of myself away I never knew I had. ~ Robert Thier

Even as satyagraha is a weapon unique of its kind and not one of the ordinary weapons used by people, so is Khadi, a unique article of commerce which will not, cannot, succeed on terms common to other articles. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Fire is often the weapon of choice for the insane. ~ Douglas Preston

Sounding frank, honest, and sincere is, of course, a rhetorical strategy in itself, known from ancient literature as parrhesia. It's often employed by liars. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

A rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer. ~ Mark Haddon

He was afraid of letting anyone know of his love, because if life had taught him anything, it was that love wasn't a prize, it was a weapon. And he was so tired of being hurt. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

Precisely because Marx was convinced that the cause of the proletariat was of decisive importance for the whole future of mankind, he wanted to create for that cause not a flimsy platform of rhetorical invective or wishful thinking, but the rock-like foundation of scientific truth. ~ Ernest Mandel

My handicap will be a weapon of seduction? Do you really think so? ~ Mathias Malzieu

Cowards live for the sake of living, but for heroes, life is a weapon, a thing to be spent, a gift to be given to the weak and the lost and the weary, even to the foolish and the cowardly. ~ N.D. Wilson

That was why the leather baldric bore no weapons: why use them when you were a weapon yourself? ~ Sarah J. Maas

Irony is always the best weapon against facism. ~ Scott Westerfeld

The Empire needed no new weapons. It built the greatest weapon in the history of the galaxy. Twice. It did not need new battle stations. It needed new leadership. ~ Chuck Wendig