Rhetoric is the science which refreshes the hungry, renders the mute articulate, makes the blind to see, and teaches one to avoid every lingual ineptitude.

Anonymous
Rhetoric published at Memmingen, 1490 - 1495, quoted from Harry Caplan "Classical Rhetoric and the Mediaeval Theory of Preaching" Of Eloquence: Studies in Ancient and Mediaeval Rhetoric. Ed. Anne King and Helen North. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1970. 109. 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
Rhetoric B 1 Ch 2 1.26. As for Rhetoric . . . the assistance it provides in finding the proper wording and embellishments was not so considerable. The mind furnishes sufficient ideas, usage provides the wording, and as for figures and ornaments, there are always too many.

Antoine Arnauldand Pierre Nicole
La Logique, ou l'art de penser. ed. Pierre Clair and Fr. Girbal. Paris: PUF, 1965. Also known as Logique de Port-Royal (1662). Quoted from Descartes and the Resilience of Rhetoric: Varieties of Cartesian Rhetorical Theory. Thomas M. Carr, Jr. Southern Illinois UP, 1990. 62. Rhetoric deals with the artificial structures of reality that in their compound complexities constitute what we call culture. We do it an injustice to define it simply as communication . . . Rhetoric is itself a structuring art. As an art of persuasion its materials are words and images, sentences and paragraphs, arguments and examples, all of which are used to organize the responses and actions of an audience. As an attitude about the world, rhetoric underwrites all kinds of processes and methods that aim to produce order out of chaos (18-9).

Mark Backman
Sophistication: Rhetoric and the Rise of Self-Consciousness. Woodbridge, Ox Bow Press, 1991. [rhetoric is a technique making it possible] to apply reason to imagination, for the better moving of the will.

Fancis Bacon
Advancement in Learning. Book 2 The study of how people use language and other symbols to realize human goals and carry out human activities . . . ultimately a practical study offering people great control over their symbolic activity.

Charles Bazerman
Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science. Madison U of Wisconsin P, 1988. 6. Hence, to say that rhetoric is situational means: (1) rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to a situation, in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response to a question, or a solution in response to a problem; (2) a speech is given rhetorical significance by the situation, just as a unit of discourse is given significance as answer or as solution by the question or problem; (3) a rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of rhetorical discourse, just as a question must exist as a necessary condition of an answer; (4) many questions are unanswered and many problems remain unsolved; similarly, many rhetorical situations mature and decay without giving birth to rhetorical utterance; (5) a situation is rhetorical insofar as it needs and invites discourse capable of participating with a situation and thereby altering its reality; (6) discourse is rhetorical insofar as it functions (or seeks to function) as a fitting response to a situation which needs and invites it. (7) Finally, the situation controls the rhetorical response in the same sense that the question controls the answer and the problem controls the solution. Not the rhetor and not persuasive intent, but the situation is the source and ground of rhetorical activity - and, I should add, of rhetorical criticism.

Lloyd Bitzer
"The Rhetorical Situation" Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968). Rhetoric is the study of the personal, social, and historical elements in human discourse- how to recognize them, interpret them, and act on them, in terms both of situational context and of verbal style. This is the kind of study one has to perform in order to effect persuasion, the traditional end of rhetoric (218).

Particia Bizzell
"Foundational and Anti-Foundationalism." Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh UP, 1992. There is obviously no unrhetorical "naturalness" of language to which one could appeal; the language itself is the result of audible rhetorical arts. . . . Language does not desire to instruct, but to convey to others a subjective impulse and its acceptance. . . . Language is rhetoric, because it desires to convey only doxa [opinion], not an episteme [knowledge]."

Carole Blair
Nietzsche's Lecture Notes on Rhetoric" Philosophy and Rhetoric. 2 (1983): 106-7. The whole art of discovering and sharing warrantable assertions (11).

Wayne Booth
Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1974. The art of changing men's [sic.] minds (95).

Ed. Bitzer and Black.
The Prospect of Rhetoric. (1971). The whole art of rhetoric (which, paradoxically, preserves these themes [the counsel of silence, the unspeakability of things, the tongue-tied philosopher filled with truth and at a loss for words, the empty and cunning oration, and so on] and treasures them) exists to rescue man from the fate of having nothing to say, whereas the philosopher, by contrast, is typically the solitary and silent case (97-8). Ask Socrates what justice is and he will require you to give him a definition, and soon the issue will be whether you know what your are talking about. Ask a rhetorician and he will rehearse everything that has been said about it, perhaps amplifying or embellishing as he proceeds, but always proceeding on the basis of what has already been put into words. The rhetorician knows justice not in itself (philosophically) but in its versions (rhetorically)-call him a collector of versions whose inventory encompasses the speakable, or the world. Socrates, by contrast, is counter inventive, as if always at a loss for words (100).

Gerald, L. Bruns
Inventions: Writing and Understanding in Literary History. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982. Rhetoric is the method, the strategy, the organon of the principles for deciding best the undecidable questions, for arriving at solutions of the unsolvable problems, for instituting method in those vital phases of human activity where no method is inherent in the total subject matter of decision. The resolving of such problems . . . is rhetoric (11). Rhetoric is the rationale of informative and suasory discourse, it operates chiefly in the areas of the contingent, its aim is the attainment of maximum probability as a basis for public decision, it is the organizing and animating principle of all subject-matters which have a relevant bearing on that decision (12).Rhetoric is fundamentally concerned with appearances . . . to the enforcement of realities (14).[rhetoric is the practice of] adjusting ideas to people . . . and people to ideas (19).

Donald C. Bryant
"Rhetoric: Its Function and Scope." The Province of Rhetoric. Ed. Joseph Schwartz and John A. Rycenga 1965. Reprinted from QJS Dec. 1953. The basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents. . . . For rhetoric as such is not rooted in any past condition of human society. It is rooted in the essential function of language itself, a function which is wholly realistic, and is continually born anew; the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols (565-7). Rhetoric is par excellence the region of the Scramble, of insult and injury, bickering, squabbling, malice and the lie, cloaked malice and subsidized lie. . . . Rhetoric also includes resources of appeal ranging from sacrificial, evangelical love, through the kinds of persuasion figuring in sexual love, to sheer "neutral" communication (communication being the area where love has become so generalized, desexualized, "technologized," that only close critical or philosophic scrutiny can discern the vestiges of the original motive) (543).

Kenneth Burke
A Rhetoric of Motives. Cleveland: World P, 1962. The grand art of communication, not of ideas only, but of sentiments, passions, dispositions and purposes. . . . That art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to its end (xlix).

George Campbell
The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Ed. Lloyd Bitzer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois P, 1963. . . . a body of rules derived from experience and observation, extending to all communication by language and designed to make it efficient (31).

Edward Taylor Channing
Lectures Read to the Seniors in Harvard College. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 1968. Rhetoric should not be used as one more synonym for "communication" in the loose sense but should refer rather specifically to end-oriented discourse, where "end" is conceived as the suasion of the audience. In my view, there are two narrative rhetorics, one concerned to suade me to accept the form of the work; another, to suade me of a certain view of how things are in the real world. The investigation of these two rhetoric and their interaction strikes me as a crucial project for students of literature and of film (203).

Seymour Chatman
Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990. . . . eloquence to persuade their fellows of the truth of what they had discovered by reason (7).

Cicero
De inventione. trans. H. M. Hubbell. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976. But the art of eloquence is something greater, and collected from more sciences and studies than people imagine. [It is the incredible magnitude and difficulty of the art which makes good orators scarce]. A knowledge of a vast number of things is necessary, without which volubility of words is empty and ridiculous; speech itself is to be formed not merely by choice, but by careful construction of words; and all the emotions of the mind, which nature has given to man, must be intimately known; for all the force and art of speaking must be employed in allaying or exciting the feelings of those who listen. To this must be added a certain portion of grace and wit, learning worthy of a well-bred man, and quickness and brevity in replying as well as attacking, accompanied with a refined decorum and urbanity. Besides, the whole of antiquity and a multitude of examples is to be kept in memory; nor is the knowledge of laws in general, or of the civil law in particular, to be neglected. And why need I add any remarks on delivery itself, which is to be ordered by action of body, by gesture, by look, and by modulation and variation of the voice, the great power of which, alone and in itself, the comparatively trivial art of actors and the stage proves, on which though all bestow their utmost labor to form their look, voice and gesture, who knows not how few there are, and have ever been, to whom one can attend with patience? What can I say of that repository for all things, the memory, which, unless it be made the keeper of the matter and words that are the fruits of thought and invention, all the talents of the orator though they be of the highest degree of excellence, will be of no avail (10)?No man can be an orator possessed of every praiseworthy accomplishment, unless he has attained the knowledge of every thing important, and of all liberal arts, for his language must be ornate and copious from knowledge, since, unless there be beneath the surface matter understood and felt by the speaker, oratory becomes an empty and almost puerilic flow of words. [but because there are so many occupations of public and private life an orator cannot be charged with knowing everything. Yet the very profession of speaking well seem[s] to undertake and promise that he can discourse gracefully and copiously on whatever subject is proposed to him (11)..

Cicero
On the Character of the Orator. trans. J.S. Watson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 1986. It is in fact probably the oldest form of 'literary criticism' in the world, . . . Rhetoric, which was the received form of critical analysis all the way from ancient society to the eighteenth century, examined the way discourses are constructed in order to achieve certain effects. It was not worried about whether its objects of inquiry were speaking or writing, poetry or philosophy, fiction or historiography: its horizon was nothing less than the field of discursive practices in society as a whole, and its particular interest lay in grasping such practices as forms of power and performance. (205)

Terry Eagleton
Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. Rhetoric is the collaborative art of addressing and guiding decision and judgment- usually public judgment about matters that cannot be decided by force or expertise (1).Rhetoric is an acquired competency, a manner of thinking that invents possibilities for persuasion, conviction, action, and judgment; it may be developed and sophisticated and, above all, critiqued and improved (16).

Thomas B. Farrell
Norms of Rhetorical Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. [To the Greeks, rhetoric] was the study of discourse in order to discover the most effective way in which to present the problematic so that another person may reach an intelligent decision [for themselves] (3). Rhetoric functions as a method of communication, spoken or written, between people as they seek to determine truth or fallacy in real situations. . . . The meaning of "rhetoric" is very largely dependent upon the epistemology, psychology, and metaphysics or the philosophical system in which it occurs (18). The art of rhetoric [as Grimaldi understands Aristotle's understanding of it] seeks out those factors which lead a reasonable mind to accept the subject or the problem. This is the proper activity of rhetoric and there it rests. It does not effect persuasion as some of the technographers said (A 1,55b 10; Topics 101b 5-10), nor does it, as far as Aristotle is concerned, make persuasion in the same sense as the artist makes his object. Rather it creates an attitude in another's mind, a sense of the reasonableness of the position proposed, whereby the auditor may make his own decision. The art, or technique of rhetoric is the ability to perceive and to present evidence which makes a decision, and a definite decision, possible; but it stops with that presentation (A 1, 55b 10-11) (27).Rhetoric was certainly not mere speech-making for [Aristotle, Isocrates or Plato]; rather it was the heart of the process by which man tried to interpret and make meaningful for himself and others the world of the real (54).

William Grimaldi
Studies in the Philosophy of Aristotle's Rhetoric. Wiesbaden: Verlag, 1972. The primordial function of rhetoric is to "make-known" meaning both to oneself and to others. Meaning is derived by a human being in and through the interpretive understanding of reality. Rhetoric is the process of making known that meaning. Is not rhetoric defined as pragmatic communication, more concerned with the contemporary audiences and specific questions than with universal audiences and general questions (360)?

"Hermeneutics and Rhetoric: A Seen but Unobserved Relationship."

Hyde, Michael and Craig Smith
Quarterly Journal of Speech 65 4 (1979): 347.[This is the distinction most typically made when poetry and rhetoric or philosophy and rhetoric are being separated. As Hyde and Smith point out, See Hoyt H. Hudson, "Rhetoric and "Poetry," in Historical Studies of Rhetoric and Rhetoricians, ed. Raymond F. Howes (Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1961): 369-79; Carroll C. Arnold
"Oral Rhetoric, Rhetoric, and Literature," Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 191-210.] Rhetoric as the study of paradigms-the organizing principles of human relations: the implicit but inviolable rules of living in social harmony; the assumptions on which human communication, understanding, and identification depend (118).

William F. Imscher
"Kenneth Burke." Traditions of Inquiry. Ed. John Brereton. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. 105-35. Rhetoric, so far as this is taken to mean the art of persuasion, i.e., the art of deluding by means of a fair semblance, and not merely excellence of speech (eloquence and style), is a dialectic, which borrows from poetry only so much as is necessary to win over men's minds to the side of the speaker before they have weighed the matter, and to rob their verdict of its freedom. . . . Force and elegance of speech (which together constitute rhetoric) belong to fine art; but oratory, being the art of playing for one's own purpose upon the weaknesses of men (let this purpose be ever so good in intention or even in fact) merits no respect whatever.

Immanuel Kant
"The Critique of Judgment" Part 1, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. trans. James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1952, sec. 53. Rhetoric, in the most general sense, is the energy inherent in emotion and thought, transmitted through a system of signs, including language, to others to influence their decisions and actions (7).

George A. Kennedy
Aristotle on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. New York: Oxford P, 1991. The superiority of one logos to another is not accidental, but depends on the presence of specific features. The study of these is the study of the art of rhetoric (82).

George Briscoe Kerford
The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1981. I confess, in discourses where we seek rather pleasure and delight than information and improvement, such ornaments as are borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults [Arist. nobody uses fine language to teach geometry]. But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness; all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.

John Locke
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2 vols., Ed. Alexander Campbell. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1984, Vol. 2, bk, 3, ch. 10, sec. 34. Rhetoric is the political affectivity of trope and argument in culture. Such a working definition includes the two traditional meanings of rhetoric-figurative language and persuasive action-and permits me to emphasize either or both senses, differently in different discourses at different historical moments, in order to specify more exactly how texts affect their audiences in terms of particular power relations (xii).

Steven Mailloux
Rhetorical Power. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989. The new art of rhetoric is the art of discovery. It is not a heuristic method or a radical interpretation but an art of topics or a selection of elements which opens the way to the recognition of new facts and to the perception of unnoticed structures and sequences. There is a fundamental rhetoric of all elements which enter into the perspective of everything communicated relative to what has already been done and said, for in the perspective of language in action, taken universally as formative of our worlds, man is the measurer of what is and what is not (110).

Richard McKeon
"Philosophy of Communication and the Arts." Rhetoric: Essays on Invention and Discovery. Ed. Mark Backman. Woodbridge: Ox Bow, 1987. Rhetoric, the systematic analysis of human discourse for the purpose of adducing useful precepts for future discourse (3).

James J. Murphy
"The Origins and Early Development of Rhetoric." A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric. Davis: Hermagoras P, 1983. It is not a poetical discipline but a practical technique with a view to producing an effect on an audience, if the resulting discourse has artistic value, that is but a consequence, not the aim of the actors endeavors. . . . Since the aim of every discourse is in reality to influence an audience, its action can only concern the future: the point is to bring people to act, to create or reinforce in them the disposition to act (115-6).

Chaim Perelman
The Prospect of Rhetoric. Eds. Bitzer and Black. 1971. As soon as a communication tries to influence one or more persons, to orient their thinking, to excite or calm their emotions, to guide their actions, it belongs to the realm of rhetoric. Dialectic, the technique of controversy, is included as one part of this larger realm (162).

Chaim Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca
The New Rhetoric. Trans. William Kluback. Notre Dame and London: U of Notre Dame P, 1982. The new rhetoric as I've presented it for the last thirty years, covers the entire field of informal reasoning: by that fact, it includes all forms of argumentation, all the reasoning that Aristotle called dialectic, in opposition to the analytical reasonings, which formal logic studies. If rhetoric so formulated has as its object "the study of discursive techniques functioning to provoke or increase the support of minds to the theses which one presents for approval," [New Rhetoric] rhetoric's role is central in politics. (129)"Rhetoric and Politics"

Perelman, Chaim
Philosophy and Rhetoric 17 3 (1984). For if this matter is really two-fold, part of it will doubtless be a form of flattery and a shameless method of addressing the public; the other may well be beautiful, a genuine attempt to make the souls of one's fellows as excellent as may be, a striving always to say what is best, whatever the degree of pleasure or pain it may afford the audience. But a rhetoric such as this you have never accounted. . . (77). The moral artist, the true orator . . . will always fix his mind upon engendering justice in the souls of his fellow citizens and the eradication of injustice, the planting of self control and the uprooting of uncontrol, the entrance of virtue and the exit of vice (79).

Plato
Gorgias. Rhetoric is the art which seeks to capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to suggest that which is possible (36).

John Poulakos
"Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric" Philosophy and Rhetoric 16 1 (1983): 35-47. Rhetoric is the mark of the author's will, and all allusion, allegory, metaphor, simile, and ornaments of style are its instruments. They point to the author's character, creative skill, and intent. . . . Moreover, they tempt the reader's mind to leave the straight and narrow paths that lead to parallel worlds beyond the world of words and things conjured by the text before the reader's eyes. They are repugnant to literal meaning and to the strict, lineal movement of thought. They are the means of the mirror that reflects only inasmuch as it distorts (8).

Stephen A. Tyler
The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue, and Rhetoric in the Postmodern World. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987. Persuasion is Aphrodite's daughter: it is she who beguiles our mortal hearts (frg 90).

Sappho
Poems and Fragments. Trans. Josephine Balmer. Seacaucus: Meadowland 1984. Rhetoric is the functional organization of discourses within its social and cultural context, in all its aspects. . . . In other words, rhetoric is all of language in its realization as discourse (7).

Paila Valesio
Novantiqua: Rhetorics as a Contemporary Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980.
Rhetoric, then, appears whenever an individual must communicate, or chooses to communicate, by word, speech, and gesture in his customary dealings with others (3).The rhetorician focuses upon that speech and language behavior that reflects the communal experience to which men become subject and to which men appeal in deliberating upon their mutual problems, in coming to decisions and actions. This is not the focus of any other art or science. (6)

Karl R. Wallace. The Prospect of Rhetoric. Ed. Bitzer and Black. 1971. Weaver, Richard M.
Rhetoric moves the soul with a movement which cannot finally be justified logically (23).. . . Rhetoric at its truest seeks to perfect men by showing them better versions of themselves, links in that chain extending up towards the ideal, which only the intellectual can apprehend and only the soul have affection for. . . .Rhetoric appears, finally, as a means by which the impulse of the soul to be ever moving is redeemed.

The Ethics of Rhetoric. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953. 25. Argumentative composition. . . . Considering Rhetoric as an offshoot from Logic.

Richard Whately
The Elements of Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois P, 1963. 4. Do not despise the art of words; do not neglect rhetoric, do not give up your familiarity with the poets. But devote more attention to the sciences.

Julian, (Roman Emperor)
Quoted by M.L. Clarke, Rhetoric at Rome: A Historical Survey. First published 1953. New York: Routledge, 3rd ed. 1996. p 164. Viewed Historically, as an academic discipline that developed in Greek times, [rhetoric] was taught in schools throughout the Greco-Roman period, and became, with grammar and dialectic, a part of the trivium in the liberal arts course of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early modern periods, rhetoric is a system of effective and artistic composition, whether in speech or in writing, originally concerned with public address in civic and religious life, but then adapted to literary composition, including poetry, and to letter-writing.

George A. Kennedy
Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, 330 - A.D. 400. George Kennedy and Stanley Porter, Eds. Leiden, Brill 1997. p 4-5. Rhetoric enables the celebration of everyday reality, facilitates communication, and articulates and regulates the expression of ambition and the whole political process. There is also of course an emotional function.

Cato the Elder
"Rem tene; verba sequentur, Grasp/Master the Subject, and the Words will Follow." (234-149 BC).

Margaret Mullett
"Rhetoric, Theory and the imperative of performance: Byzantium and now" 151 170. Rhetoric in Byzantium. Rhetoric is an acquired competency, a manner of thinking that invents possibiligties for persuasion, conviction, action, and jedgment, it may be developed and sohisticated, and above all, critiqued and improved.

Elizabeth Jeffreys
Norms of Rhetorical cutlure, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Eloquence is the attendant of peace, the companion of ease and prosperity, and the tender offspring of a free and a well established constitution.

Thomas B. Farrell
Rhetoric is, therefore, the science of the laws of effective discourse, or the art of speaking and writing effectively.

Daivd J. Hill
The Elements of Rhetoric and Composition (1878) Rhetoric, I shall urge, should be the study of misunderstanding and its remedies. We struggle all our days with misunderstandings, and no apology is required for any study which can prevent or remove them...[so as rhetoricians we must] consider more closely how words work in discourse.

Richards, I.A.
The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) Rhetoric is the art of communicating through symbols ideas about reality.

Sister Mary Joseph.
The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric (1947) This [is the] sine qua non of rhetoric: the art of linguistically or symbolically creating salience. After salience is created, the situation must be translated into meaning.

Vatz, Richard E.
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1973. The task of the public speaker is to discuss capably those matters that law and custom have fixed for the uses of citizenship and to secure as far as possible the agreement of his hearers.

Rhetorica ad Herrenium
Murphy, Katula, and Hoppmann's A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric. (pg. 134) Rhetoric, in the modern acceptation of the term, is the science of good writing. It includes within its province precepts pertaining to all sorts of writing, poetry as well as prose, orations, philosophical treatises, essays, and epistles, It regulates the use of the pen, and is particularly careful to produce a good style of composition.

Henry Jones Ripley
Sacred Rhetoric: or, Composition and Delivery of Sermons (1849) Rhetoric lies in between grammar and logic. Rhetoric is the study which teaches us how to invent thought, and how to express it most appropriately in words.

Kellog, Brainerd
A Textbook on Rhetoric (1881) Rhetoric is the art of dressing up some unimportant matter so as to fool the audience for the time being.

T. S. Eliot
"Vorticism" (1914) Rhetoric, or the art of acting on someone through words, is an abstractive art [...] For me rhetoric refers to the ways one person attempts to act on another, to make him laugh or think, squirm or thrill, hate or mate.

James Moffett
Teaching the Universe of Discourse (1968) What is rhetoric? There are too many answers, too much at variance with each other. Rhetoric, let us say, is the capacity to persuade others; or a practical realisation of this ability; or, at least, an attempt at persuasion, successful or not.

Robert Wardy
The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and their Successors, 2005 Murphy, James P. et al.
Rhetoric [is] the theory of human discourse

A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric (4th ed, p 186) The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. [Rhetric?]

Edward Bernays
Propaganda p. 1 In every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off the powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality.

Michele Foucault
The Order of Discourse It is the duty, then, of the interpreter and teacher of Holy Scripture [rhetor has become preacher], the defender of the true faith and the opponent of error, both to teach what is right and to refute what is wrong, and in the performance of this task to conciliate the hostile, to rouse the careless, and to tell the ignorant both what is occurring at present and what is probable in the future. But once that his hearers are friendly, attentive, and ready to learn, whether he has found them so, or has himself made them so, the remaining objects are to be carried out in whatever way the case requires.

St Augustine
On Christian Doctrine, Book 4, Chapter 4. Rhetoric refers to the study and uses of written, spoken and visual language. It investigates how language is used to organize and maintain social groups, construct meanings and identities, coordinate behavior, mediate power, produce change, and create knowledge.

San Diego State University A rhetoric can never be innocent, can never be a disinterested arbiter of the ideological claims of others because it is always already serving certain ideological claims.

James Berlin The grammatical model of the question becomes rhetorical not when we have, on the one hand, a literal meaning and on the other hand a figural meaning, but when it is impossible to decide by grammatical or other linguistic devices which of the two meanings (that can be entirely incompatible) prevails. Rhetoric radically suspends logic and opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration. And although it would perhaps be somewhat more remote from common usage, I would not hesitate to equate the rhetorical, figural potentiality of language with literature itself.

De Man.
Norton Anthology 1519-1520. The art of rhetoric is the systematic study and intentional practice of effective symbolic expression. Effective here will mean achieving the purposes of the symbol-user, whether that purpose is persuasion, clarity, beauty, or mutual understanding.

James Herrick
The History and Theory of Rhetoric, 7.
Let this be our definition of rhetoric: the capacity (dynamis) to observe in regard to any subject the available means of persuasion. Since rhetoric can be applied to any subject, it has no subject matter of its own. Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.
Charles Maurice de.

Talleyrand-Perigod, In every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off the powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality. Discourse is the power which is to be seized.

Michele Foucault
Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg (Eds.). The Rhetorical Tradition. Boston: Bedford, 1990. p 1155. Democratic rhetoric always attempts to combine two different, but compatible modes of politics in a way that is obscured by overstating the elite vision of leadership.

Du Bois, W.E.B.
Rhetoric (or human speech) is a great miracle: by it nations are enlightened and reformed; by it the cause of justice and liberty is defended; by it evils are exposed, ignorance dispelled, the path to duty made plain, and by it those who live today, are put into the possession of wisdom of ages gone by.

Frederick Douglas
Great is the Miracle of Human Speech (1891) When the people know writing, their virtue deteriorates.

Lao Tzu
Wen-Tzu: Understanding the Mysteries, Lao Tzu, Thomas Cleary Oratory: n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding.

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary Upaya is a term used in Buddhism to refer to an aspect of guidance along the Buddhist paths to liberation where a conscious, voluntary action "is driven by an incomplete reasoning" about its direction. Upaya is often used with kaushalya, upaya-kaushalya meaning "skill in means"....The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism notes that rendering the Chinese term fāngbiàn into English as 'skillful' or as 'expedient' is often difficult, because the connotations shift according to the context as (1) the teaching being something to marvel at — the fact that the Buddha can present these difficult truths in everyday language (thus, skillful), yet that (2) they are teachings of a lower order as compared to the ultimate truth, and are far removed from reflecting reality, and are a kind of 'stopgap' measure (thus, expedient).
Wikipedia Rhetoric is the art of describing reality through language. Under this definition, the study of rhetoric becomes an effort to understand how humans, in various capacities and in a variety of situations, describe reality through language. To act rhetorically is to use language in asserting or seeming to assert claims about reality. At the heart of this definition is the assumption that what renders discourse potentially persuasive is that a rhetor (e.g. a speaker or writer) implicitly or explicitly sets forth claims that either differ from or cohere with views of reality held by audiences (e.g. a specific scholarly community, a reader of fiction, or an assembly of persons attending a political rally).

Cherwitz and Hikins
Communication and Knowledge: An Investigation in Rhetorical Epistemology. 62. "[a] medium's various forms of expression at work, including audio, visual, textual, haptic, and procedural modes"

Jason Hawreliak
Multimodal Semiotics and Rhetoric in Videogames, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018 [In The Vocation of a Teacher (1988), Wayne C.] "Booth affirmed that rhetoric held 'entire dominion over all verbal pursuits. Logic, dialectic, grammar, philosophy, history, poetry, all are rhetoric.'"
James A. Herrick

The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction. Routledge 2018: p3. Rhetoric is the science of seeing and uttering what ought to be said on political questions in language that is likely to prove persuasive to the people.

Ariston of Cos
Quoted by Quintilian, Book 2, Chapter 15 Writing or speech is perceived in terms of its capacity to do something for people, inform them, persuade them, enlighten them, change them, amuse them, or inspire them. The new Rhetoric challenges the classical division between dialectic and rhetoric, seeing rhetoric as referring to all sorts of discourse, whether philosophical, academic, professional, or public in nature and so seeing audience considerations as applicable to all discourse types
Theresa Enos, ed.

Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. Taylor & Francis, 1996. [Rhetoric] lies in between grammar and logic. Rhetoric is the study which teaches us how to invent thought, and how to express it most appropriately in words.
Brainerd Kellogg

A Textbook on Rhetoric (1881) [Rhetoric is that] which gives to men freedom in their own persons, and to individuals the power of ruling over others in their several states; ... the artificer of persuasion.
Plato's Gorgias. Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing and even today words retain much of their magical power. By words one of us can give another the greatest happiness or bring about utter despair; by words the teacher imparts his knowledge to the student; by words the orator sweeps his audience with him and determines its judgments and decisions. Words call forth emotions and are universally the means by which we influence our fellow-creatures.
Attributed to Sigmond Freud by Robert Dilts

Slight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change. Rhetoric, as techne, is the art of creating discourse, whether speech or writing, to achieve a desired end for some audience. Like all arts, it can be practiced badly or well. It becomes degraded when it is taught or practiced as a set of mechanical procedures, rules or formulas to be followed or patterns to be copied. It achieves status as a true art when it is taught and practiced as a form of knowledge involving a critical understanding of the purposes and effects of the art on audiences and the practical know-how to achieve those effects in new discursive situations. (210)
James Porter

Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric. Persuasion [Rhetoric] is leading a person along in stages, helping them to better understand their own thinking and how it could align with the message at hand. You can't persuade another person to change their mind if that person doesn't want to do so, and as you will see, the techniques that work best focus on a person's motivations more than their conclusions.
David McRaney

How Minds Change: the Surprising Science of Believe, Opinion, and Persuasion. Rhetoric, after all, being the art of persuading people to accept something, whether it is true or false, would anyone dare to maintain that truth should stand there without any weapons in the hands of its defenders against falsehood; that those speakers, that is to say, who are trying to convince their hearers of what is untrue, should know how to get them on their side, to gain their attention and have them eating out of their hands by their opening remarks, while these who are defending the truth should not?
St. Augustine

On Christian Doctrine. …one should not try to persuade; rather, you should try to layout the territory as best you can so that other people can use their own intellectual powers to work out for themselves what they think is right or wrong.…the best rhetoric is the least rhetoric.
Noam Chomsky

Language, Politics, Composition. The art of a lot of political rhetoric is to say things that are vague enough that there is plausible deniability in terms of some position that will tick off a constituency but that can be interpreted by those who are receptive in a way that's favorable to their interests.
Steven Pinker

YouTube The most basic form of rhetoric is candy from strangers
George Pullman

10/31/2023. [Rhetoric is] The ability to tell stories that organize behavior. [The author does not use the word "rhetoric" but I think it is still a plausible definition]
Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind. Rhetoric is, after all, the art of persuasion. Its primary purpose is thus not to convey unambiguous pieces of information in a neutral or unbiased way, but rather to articulate a particular point of view in a persuasive manner.
Martha Vinson

Rhetoric and writing strategies in the ninth century. Rhetoric in Byzantium. 2001. Edited by Elisabeth Jeffreys. p. 10