A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.
There comes a time when what is needed is not just rhetoric, but boots on the ground.
The level of discourse in this country is falling to a depth that cannot be sustained.
I'm in the civil discourse business. I think it takes all kinds. And more power to everybody.
With European powers no new subjects of difficulty have arisen, and those which were under discussion, although not terminated, do not present a more unfavorable aspect for the future preservation of that good understanding which it has ever been our desire to cultivate.
Genuine dialogue, not rhetorical bomb-throwing, leads to progress.
The most profound statements are often said in silence.
Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.
However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow.
The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.