The most characteristic ...

The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men\'s beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.
The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.
 Kenneth Burke

More phrases

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Never complain and never explain.
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
 George S. Patton
Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.
 Robert Schuller
Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
 Harriet Beecher Stowe

Quotes from the same author

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 his own making/goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order)/and rotten with perfection.
 Kenneth Burke