Explore a collection of the most beloved and motivational quotes and sayings about Discourse. Share these powerful messages with your loved ones on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or on your personal blog, and inspire the world with their wisdom. We've compiled the Top 100 Discourse Quotes and Sayings from 91 influential authors, including Namsoon Kang,Kenneth L. Pike,Neil Postman,David Bohm,Oli Anderson, for you to enjoy and share.

Theological discourses function in various ways as sites of contestation and resistance, of forming new religious and personal identities, and of building solidarities. Theological discourses that theologians produce, disseminate, and teach in academia are not simply objective interpretations and neutral reflections on the world and the church in it. Instead theological discourses are productions of and for the world and the church that we live in By Namsoon Kang Theological Discourses Resistance Identities Solidarities

Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements. By Kenneth L. Pike Fruitful Statements Discourse Science Theology

My argument is limited to saying that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse; it does so by encouraging certain uses of the intellect, by favoring certain definitions of intelligence and wisdom, and by demanding a certain kind of content - in a phrase, by creating new forms of truth-telling. By Neil Postman Discourse Intellect Wisdom Content Phrase

Dialogue is a space where we may see the assumptions which lay beneath the surface of our thoughts, assumptions which drive us, assumptions around which we build organizations, create economies, form nations and religions. These assumptions become habitual, mental habits that drive us, confuse us and prevent our responding intelligently to the challenges we face every day. By David Bohm Assumptions Dialogue Thoughts Organizations Create

Dialogue isn't a competition to be the smartest or the most correct person in the room; it is a collaboration to find the truth. By Oli Anderson Dialogue Room Truth Competition Smartest

Discussion in America means dissent. By James Thurber America Discussion Dissent

Words themselves - the very material of our discourse increasingly take on masks or disguises By Dennis Potter Words Disguises Material Discourse Increasingly

I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind. By Michel De Montaigne Ease Enter Discussion Argument Great

As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access. By Jurgen Habermas Speaker Relation World Represent States

Thought is the fountain of speech. By Chrysippus Thought Speech Fountain

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading. By Jonathan Swift Argument Worst Sort Managed Conversation

Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order. By Jeremy Collier Rhetoric Order Reason Dressed Argument

Where there are so many, all speech becomes a debate without end. But two together may perhaps find wisdom. By J.r.r. Tolkien End Speech Debate Wisdom Find

Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible. By Aristotle. Rhetoric Opposites Made Advocates Reprehensible

Rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination By W.b.yeats Rhetoric Imagination Work

All discourse of which others cannot partake is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertainment, but, what never fails to excite resentment, an insolent assertion of superiority, and a triumph over less enlightened understandings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with weariness but malignity; and those who conceive themselves insulted by his knowledge never fail to tell with acrimony how injudiciously it was exerted. By Samuel Johnson Entertainment Resentment Superiority Understandings Discourse

Since we want not emancipation from impulse but clarification of impulse, the duty of rhetoric is to bring together action and understanding into a whole that is greater than scientific perception. By Richard M. Weaver Perception Impulse Emancipation Clarification Duty

Extended discourse, whether in the form of novels or expository treatises, presents the mind with a category of stimuli that can guide thinking though a long, complex, and coherent line of reasoning. Books structure ideas almost uniquely: The vocabulary and thought forms that are commonplace in book-length texts are rare in daily conversations. Books present a much wider range of vocabulary, concepts, and inferences than can be found in our daily banter with friends and family members. By Michael E. Martinez Complex Extended Discourse Treatises Long

But why at least? What a business it is, the human discourse. I By John Banville Discourse Business Human

Speech is the golden harvest that followeth the flowering of thought. By Martin Farquhar Tupper Speech Thought Golden Harvest Followeth

A discourse approaches universality when it frees itself from its origins, leaves them behind, disavows them: having reached this point, if it would reinvigorate itself, avoid unreality or sclerosis, it must renounce its own exigencies, break its forms and its models, it must condescend to bad taste. By Emil M. Cioran Origins Leaves Disavows Point Avoid

It is thus evident that Rhetoric does not deal with any one definite class of subjects, but, like Dialectic, [is of general application]; also, that it is useful; and further, that its function is not so much to persuade, as to find out in each case the existing means of persuasion. By Aristotle. Dialectic Rhetoric Subjects Application Persuade

It is astonishing how articulate one can become when alone and raving at a radio. Arguments and counter arguments, rhetoric and bombast flow from one's lips like scurf from the hair of a bank manager. By Stephen Fry Radio Astonishing Articulate Raving Arguments

Every argument is incapable of helping unless it is singular and addressed to a single person. Therefore, one who discourses in any other way presumably does so from love of reputation. By Apollonius Of Tyana Person Argument Incapable Helping Singular

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie. By Leonardo Da Vinci Man False Animals True Lie

Conversationis like the table of contents of a dull book ... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayedin it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance. By Stendhal Conversationis Book Table Contents Dull

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech. By Emile M. Cioran Essentials Speech Sudden Silence Middle

Dialogue launches language, the mind, but once it is launched we develop a new power, "inner speech," and it is this that is indispensable for our further development, By Oliver Sacks Dialogue Language Mind Power Speech

Education may well be, as of right, the instrument whereby every individual, in a society like our own, can gain access to any kind of discourse. But we well know that in its distribution, in what it permits and in what it prevents, it follows the well-trodden battle-lines of social conflict. Every educational system is a political means of maintaining or of modifying the appropriation of discourse, with the knowledge and the powers it carries with it. By Michel Foucault Discourse Education Individual Instrument Society

Speech is but broken light upon the depth of the unspoken. By George Eliot Speech Unspoken Broken Light Depth

Dialogue concentrates meaning; conversation dilutes it. By Robert Mckee Dialogue Meaning Conversation Concentrates Dilutes

Conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavor at effect. By John Keats Conversation Knowledge Effect Search Endeavor

Speech is the mirror of the mind. By Seneca The Younger Speech Mind Mirror

What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. By Henry David Thoreau Study Called Eloquence Forum Commonly

Conversation opens our views, and gives our faculties a more vigorous play; it puts us upon turning our notions on every side, and holds them up to a light that discovers those latent flaws which would probably have lain concealed in the gloom of unagitated abstraction. By William Melmoth Conversation Views Play Side Abstraction

The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts. Given By Ludwig Wittgenstein Facts Essential Business Language Assert

The poetry of speech. By Lord Byron Speech Poetry

Dialogue means debates and everyone's point of view. By Kevin Hart Dialogue View Debates Point

Speech is the index of the mind. By Seneca The Younger Speech Mind Index

Conversation succeeds conversation, Until there's nothing left to talk about Except truth, the perennial monologue, And no talker to dispute it but itself. By Laura Riding Truth Monologue Conversation Succeeds Left

Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill. By Richard Whately Rhetoric Oratorical Rules Skill Benefit

A key difference between a dialogue and an ordinary discussion is that, within the latter people usually hold relatively fixed positions and argue in favor of their views as they try to convince others to change. At best this may produce agreement or compromise, but it does not give rise to anything creative. By David Change Key Difference Dialogue Ordinary

The rhetoric of theory is always in a bind. It pronounces ideas and denounces failures to accept or grasp them while insisting that there are no grounds either for accepting or grasping ideas. By Paul Fry Bind Rhetoric Theory Ideas Pronounces

Language is the medium of our thoughts. By Frederick Lenz Language Thoughts Medium

Speech is too often not the art of concealing thought, but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal. By Thomas Carlyle Thought Speech Conceal Art Concealing

The figures of rhetoric are the beauties of all poems we have ever read. Without them we would merely be us: eating, sleeping, manufacturing, and dying. With them everything can be glorious. For though we have nothing to say, we can at least say it well. By Mark Forsyth Read Figures Rhetoric Beauties Poems

Debate is the death of conversation. By Emil Ludwig Debate Conversation Death

The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out. By Salman Rushdie Privilege Deserves Exist Discourse Literature

The power of real debate is in the language and intellectual honesty of the debaters, alongside the engagement of spectators. By Ruzwana Bashir Debaters Alongside Spectators Power Real

The unconscious is the discourse of the Other. By Jacques Lacan Unconscious Discourse

In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them. By John Stuart Mill Contrary General Language Offence Ground

Arguing is the Olympics of talking By Stewart Stafford Olympics Arguing Talking

Our lives are co-authored in dialogue. By Michael Nichols Dialogue Lives Coauthored

When two warring people face each other, the war of words jumps beyond the subject. The subject remains no more central to the arguments. By Girdhar Joshi Subject Warring People Face War

Conversations carry a momentum, there's a path they are expected to take, a cycle, a season, like the growing of crop. Take the rhythm of seasons away and farmers grow confused. Turn a conversation at right angles and men lose their surety. By Mark Lawrence Momentum Cycle Crop Carry Path

Each of us has a tongue and a voice. These instruments of speech can be used destructively or employed constructively. By Billy Graham Voice Tongue Constructively Instruments Speech

There are a significant number of learned men and women who hold that any successful effort to make ideas lively, intelligible and interesting is a manifestation of deficient scholarship. This is the fortress behind which the minimally coherent regularly find refuge. By John Kenneth Galbraith Lively Intelligible Scholarship Significant Number

It is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations, wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies. By Francis Bacon Words Men Associate Vulgar Understanding

Arguments about language are usually arguments about politics, disguised and channeled through one of our most distinctive markers of identity. By Robert Lane Greene Arguments Politics Disguised Identity Language

Speech is reason's brother, and a kingly prerogative of man. By Martin Farquhar Tupper Speech Brother Man Reason Kingly

False attributions are the bane of legitimate discourse. By Winston Smith False Discourse Attributions Bane Legitimate

Speech is not a means in the service of an external end. It contains its own rule of usage, ethics, and view of the world, as a gesture sometimes bears the whole truth about a man. By Maurice Merleau Ponty Speech End Service External Ethics

Debate is an attempt to cling to the illusion of control provided by a point of view designed to keep the ego in place; dialogue is an attempt to dance with the unknown at the risk of losing what we think we know. By Oli Anderson Attempt Debate Place Dialogue Cling

We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound. By J.d. Salinger Talk Hold Converse Expound

Speech is civilization itself. By Thomas Mann Speech Civilization

Language is evidently one of the principle instruments or helps of thought; and any imperfection in the instrument, or in the mode of employing it, is confessedly liable, still more than in almost any other art, to confuse and impede the process, and destroy all ground of confidence in the result. By John Stuart Mill Language Thought Liable Art Process

To bar communication between intellectuals, who are always our best hope of peace, is particularly self-defeating and inane. It declares, inter alia, that we have a) made up our minds about what we think, b) closed our minds to what others think, and c) chosen to go on hearing nothing with which we happen to disagree. By Howard Jacobson Intellectuals Peace Inane Bar Communication

The written argument endures. The oral argument is fleeting. By Ruth Bader Ginsburg Endures Argument Written Fleeting Oral

Nonsense on stilts By Jeremy Bentham Nonsense Stilts

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress (Joseph Joubert). By David Webb Joseph Joubert Argument Discussion Victory

A sensible speaker is a slave to making sense. By Mokokoma Mokhonoana Sense Speaker Slave Making

Sweet discourse makes short daies and nights.[Sweet discourse makes short days and nights.] By George Herbert Sweet Discourse Makes Short Nights

Of Rhetoric various definitions have been given by different writers; who, however, seem not so much to have disagreed in their conceptions of the nature of the same thing, as to have had different things in view while they employed the same term. By Richard Whately Rhetoric Writers Term Definitions Disagreed

Language is froth on the surface of thought. By John Mccarthy Language Thought Froth Surface

The art of conversation is to be prompt without being stubborn, to refute without argument, and to clothe great matters in a motley garb. By Benjamin Disraeli Stubborn Argument Garb Art Conversation

Angus thought about this. She was right. That was why our national conversation was so bad. Courtesy had been abandoned in favour of the put-down, the attack, the calculated sound bite. What sort of national conversation was that? The answer came to him immediately: none. By Alexander Mccall Smith Angus Thought Conversation National Bad

A brilliant and challenging discussion presented with extraordinary clarity. By Christopher Lehmann-Haupt Clarity Brilliant Challenging Discussion Presented

The philosopher caught in the nets of language. By Friedrich Nietzsche Language Philosopher Caught Nets

Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others. By Ray Comfort Rhetoric Persuade Opinion Language Inform

It is by speech that many of our best gains are made. A large part of the good we receive comes to us in conversation. By Washington Gladden Made Speech Gains Conversation Large

Men of many words sometimes argue for the sake of talking; men of ready tongues frequently dispute for the sake of victory; men in public life often debate for the sake of opposing the ruling party, or from any other motive than the love of truth. By George Crabbe Men Sake Talking Victory Party

By consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse. When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. By Thomas Hobbes Thought Discourse Consequence Called Words

In debate, especially when the dispute is hot and supercharged and freighted with ill will, I have always been the flabbiest of contenders. My voice breaks, becomes shrill; I sweat. I get a sloppy half-grin on my face. Worse, my mind wanders and then takes flight while the logic I possess in fair measure under more placid circumstances abandons my brain like an ungrateful urchin. By William Styron Debate Contenders Dispute Hot Supercharged

If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words. By Henry Theodore Tuckerman Sculpture Art Painting Literature Nature

Speech is the mark of humanity. It is the normal terminus of thought. By Susanne Katherina Langer Speech Humanity Mark Thought Normal

Means of succeeding in the object we set before us. We must make as it were a fresh start, and before going further define what rhetoric is. 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. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy, geometry about the properties of magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us; By Aristotle. Rhetoric Succeeding Object Set Art

Speech is the image of actions By Hope Solo Speech Actions Image

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden. By Karl Kraus Language Thought Handmaiden Mother

In the absence of any written analogue to speech, the sensible, natural environment remains the primary visual counterpart of spoken utterance, the palpable site, or matrix wherein meaning occurs and proliferates. In the absence of writing, we find ourselves situated in the field of discourse as we are embedded in the natural landscape; indeed, the two matrices are not separable. We can no more stabilize the language and render its meanings determinate than we can freeze all motion and metamorphosis within the land. By David Abram Absence Natural Speech Utterance Site

Although culture is a creation of speech, it is recreated anew by every medium of communication - from painting to hieroglyphs to the alphabet to television. Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility. By Neil Postman Speech Communication Television Medium Culture

Television is apparently the enemy of nuance. But nuance is essential for a thoughtful discussion. By Barney Frank Television Nuance Apparently Enemy Discussion

Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade before the public. By George W. Crane Language Public Apparel Thoughts Parade

Reading is a privileged pleasure because each of us enjoys it, quite complexly, in ways not replicable by anyone else. But there is enough structural common ground in the text itself so that we can talk to each other, even sometimes persuade each other, about what we read: and that many-voiced conversation, with which, thankfully, we shall never have done, is one of the most gratifying responses to literary creation, second only to reading itself. By Robert Alter Complexly Reading Privileged Pleasure Enjoys

The method of exposition which philosophers have adopted leads many to suppose that they are simply inquiries, that they have no interest in the conclusions at which they arrive, and that their primary concern is to follow their premises to their logical conclusions. By Morris Raphael Cohen Conclusions Inquiries Arrive Method Exposition

Each of these failures for me is a failure of communication, via a mode of communication that can be violent or meant to behave violently. Butler provides a way of thinking about how language becomes an instrument of violence. And why we feel it as such. By Claudia Rankine Communication Violently Failures Failure Mode

This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason. By Herbert Marcuse Importance Subordination Functional Organization Discourse

Dialogue unplugs you from your own programming as you become more real; debate turns up the voltage and entrenches you more deeply. By Oli Anderson Dialogue Real Debate Deeply Unplugs

There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixedrules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices. By Blaise Pascal Agreed Hour Caprices Truths Remain

Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach upon the province of grammarians; and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine that they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern. By David Hume Grammarians Words Concern Usual Philosophers

We might think then of rhetorical production as an extended intentional state in which rhetoric emerges from the dynamic, ongoing intra-actions of human and nonhuman entities all projecting toward each other. By Anonymous Dynamic Ongoing Rhetorical Production Extended