Empty Rhetoric Quotes

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out, they hear politicians make promises that won't come true because they don't even mean them -- campaign fantasies that win elections but don't get nations moving again.

We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Establishment, career politicians are about saying one thing and doing another.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.

I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.

I saw Sadat as a character out of Aida. He talked a lot but never acted. I didn’t take him seriously.

Over the centuries, Chinese bureaucrats perfected the dark arts of emptiness to such an extent that when they deliver speeches these days, they often recite verbatim speeches that they have previously delivered, with the sparest of adjustments.

The mediocrity of his [Winston Churchill's] thinking is concealed by the majesty of his language.... He mistakes verbal facilities for mental inspiration.

Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants.

Talking heads will chatter, argue, and rant on TV and in the houses of Congress but that's all they will do. Weeks and months will go by in which the crowning achievement of Congress may be little more than perhaps passing a bill to declare National Eat Your Spinach Week (sponsored, of course, by the Spinach Growers of America).

When you have a 12-minute debate over whether lipstick on a pig refers to a demeaning comment about the vice presidential candidate, you know we're not talking about health reform, we're not talking about energy policy, we're not talking about balancing the budget. And you know, it's fairly stupid.

He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.

It is always "Youth, youth," when there is nothing else to be said.

The things that mount the rostrum with a skip, And then skip down again, pronounce a text, Cry hem; and reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene!

She...can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom.

On Capitol Hill we like to make tough speeches. We don’t like to make tough choices.

Politicians are ambitious not to make important decisions but to say important things.

We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.