“Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.”

— Thomas Sowell

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Rhetoric is no substitute for reality." by Thomas Sowell?

Thomas Sowell 101

American economist, social theorist, political philosopher … 1930

Related quotes

“There was no substitute for reality; one should be aware of imitations.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 23 “Moondozer” (p. 129)

“Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.”

Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890–1954) American electrical engineer and inventor

As quoted in "Edwin Armstrong : Pioneer of the Airwaves" by Yannis Tsividis http://www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine/Spring2002/Armstrong.html
Unsourced variant: Men like to substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.

“Reality and history, however, are not dialectical, and no idealist rhetorical gymnastics can make them conform to the dialect.”

Antonio Negri book Empire

131
Empire

“To put it in a nutshell, he was afflicted with a love of literature. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

“There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply are, whereas ideas are worked out. There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone, of images and rhetoric. So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 231
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

“Thus the true philosophy is rhetoric, and the true rhetoric is philosophy, a philosophy which does not need an “external” rhetoric to convince, and a rhetoric that does not need an “external” content of verity.”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), pp. 31-32
Context: In the second part of the Phaedrus Plato attempts to clarify the nature of “true” rhetoric. … it does not arise from a posterior unity which presupposes the duality of ratio and passio, but illuminates and influences the passions through its original, imaginative characters. Thus philosophy is not a posterior synthesis of pathos and logos but the original unity of the two under the power of the original archai. Plato sees true rhetoric as psychology which can fulfill its truly “moving” function only if it masters original images [eide]. Thus the true philosophy is rhetoric, and the true rhetoric is philosophy, a philosophy which does not need an “external” rhetoric to convince, and a rhetoric that does not need an “external” content of verity.