If it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against all good things except virtue, and above all against the things that are most useful.#Quoted in Dierdre McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (1985)
The meaning in any given composition is in inverse ratio to the author’s belief in his own literalness.#Quoted in Dierdre McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (1985)
The acceptance of an analogy . . . is often equivalent to a judgment as to the importance of the characteristics that the analogy brings to the fore.#Quoted in Dierdre McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (1985)
Rhetoric is an economics of language, the study of how scarce means are allocated to the insatiable desires of people to be heard.#
Unexamined metaphor is a substitute for thinking—which is a recommendation to examine the metaphors, not to attempt the impossible by banishing them.#
The opportunity cost of enchanting one’s fellow economists is alienating noneconomists. There is no such thing as a free argument.#
A bad book is a book in whose mock reader we discover a person we refuse to become, a mask we refuse to put on, a role we will not play.#Quoted in Dierdre McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics (1985)