Kenneth Burke > Quotes

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

“Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality.”
― Kenneth Burke

“With my book in one hand
And my drink in the other
What more could I want

But fame,
Better health,
And ten million dollars?”
― Kenneth Burke

“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”
― Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form

“Speech in its essence is not neutral.”
― Kenneth Burke

“Every question selects a field of battle.”
― Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form

“Ecology teaches us “that the total economy of the planet cannot be guided by an efficient rationale of exploitation alone,” wrote Burke more than 70 years ago, “but that the exploiting part must eventually suffer if it too greatly disturbs the balance of the whole.”
― Kenneth Burke

“Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.”
― Kenneth Burke

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

“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you... The discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”
― Kenneth Burke