Kenneth Burke

The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use…

— Kenneth Burke

Man is rotten with perfection.

— Kenneth Burke

“It's more complicated than that." TL in "The Rhetoric of Religion”

— Kenneth Burke

“With my book in one hand And my drink in the other What more could I want But fame, Better health, And…

— Kenneth Burke

Creation implies authority in the sense of originator.

— Kenneth Burke

If decisions were a choice between alternatives, decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives.

— Kenneth Burke

For no continuity of social act is possible without a corresponding social status and the many different kinds of act required in…

— Kenneth Burke

Man is/the symbol-using (symbol making, symbol-misusing) animal/inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)/separated from his natural condition by instruments of…

— Kenneth Burke

The use of words by human agents to form attitudes or induce actionsin other human agents.

— Kenneth Burke

You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your…

— Kenneth Burke

Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use…

— Kenneth Burke

We not only interpret the character of events... we may also interpret our interpretations.

— Kenneth Burke

Language does our thinking for us.

— Kenneth Burke

“Ecology teaches us “that the total economy of the planet cannot be guided by an efficient rationale of exploitation alone,” wrote Burke…

— Kenneth Burke

A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.

— Kenneth Burke

“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in…

— Kenneth Burke

Stories are equipment for living.

— Kenneth Burke

Words are like planets, each with its own gravitational pull.

— Kenneth Burke

The universe would appear to be something like a piece of cheese; it can be sliced in an infinite number of ways-…

— Kenneth Burke

Our purpose is simply to ask how theological principles can be shown to have usable secular analogues that throw light upon the…

— Kenneth Burke

Dignity belongs to the conquered....

— Kenneth Burke

“Speech in its essence is not neutral.”

— Kenneth Burke

The progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken.

— Kenneth Burke

Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.

— Kenneth Burke

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection…

— Kenneth Burke