Kenneth Burke Quotes:

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

source: - Kenneth Burke (1984). “Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose”, p.6, Univ of California Press

Topics: Character, Events, May

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.

source: - Kenneth Burke, Joseph R. Gusfield (1989). “On Symbols and Society”, p.158, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Men, Reflection, Reality, Deflection

Stories are equipment for living.

Topics: Stories, Equipment

Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.

source: - Kenneth Burke (1969). “A Rhetoric of Motives”, p.43, Univ of California Press

Topics: Mean, Essentials, Use, Use Of Language

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

Topics: Persuasion, Rhetoric

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.

source: - Kenneth Burke (1973). “Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature and Method”, p.16, Univ of California Press

Topics: Animal, Men, Order

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.

Topics: Attitude, Men, Political

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

source: - 1936 Permanence and Change.

Topics: Way

Man is rotten with perfection.

Topics: Men, Perfection, Rotten

Dignity belongs to the conquered....

Topics: Dignity

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

source: - Kenneth Burke (2005). “Here & Elsewhere: The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Burke”, p.146, David R. Godine Publisher

Topics: Choices, Decision, Alternatives

Creation implies authority in the sense of originator.

source: - Kenneth Burke (1970). “The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology”, p.174, Univ of California Press

Topics: Creation, Authority

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

Topics: People, Progress, Enlightenment

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

Topics: Attitude, Use, Agents

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

source: - Kenneth Burke (1970). “The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology”, p.2, Univ of California Press

Topics: Light, Principles, Purpose, Theological, Analogue

For no continuity of social act is possible without a corresponding social status and the many different kinds of act required in an industrial state, with its high degree of specialization, make for corresponding classification of status.

source: - Kenneth Burke (1962). “A grammar of motives, and A rhetoric of motives”

Topics: Degrees, Different, Kind, Social Status, Specialization

Creation implies authority in the sense of originator. The possibility of a 'Fall' is implied in a Covenant insofar as the idea of a Covenant implies the possibility of its being violated.

Topics: Fall, Ideas, Covenant

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

source: - Kenneth Burke (1969). “A Rhetoric of Motives”, p.55, Univ of California Press

Topics: Attitude, Men, Order, Identifying

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality,

source: - Kenneth Burke (1966). “Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method”, p.45, Univ of California Press

Topics: Reflection, Reality, Given, Deflection, Terminology

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

Topics: Language, Planets

Language does our thinking for us.

source: - Kenneth Burke, Herbert W. Simons (1989). “The Legacy of Kenneth Burke”, p.17, Univ of Wisconsin Press

Topics: Thinking, Doe, Language

The universe would appear to be something like a piece of cheese; it can be sliced in an infinite number of ways- and when one has chosen his own pattern of slicing, he finds that other men's cuts fall at the wrong places.

source: - Kenneth Burke (1984). “Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose”, p.103, Univ of California Press

Topics: Fall, Cutting, Men