The general opinion … is that the humanist tradition is primarily of literary and aesthetical significance rather than of philosophical significance.… - Ernesto Grassi

The art of eloquence belongs to the realm of probability because it constantly directs its glance at the specific, variable psychic state of the audience.

In Quintilian’s expositions there appears a note of melancholy when he discovers that toward the decline of life, the ratio sneaks in gradually, choking up insight into the original.

According to the traditional interpretation Plato’s attitude against rhetoric is a rejection of the doxa, or opinion, and of the impact of images, upon which the art of rhetoric relies; at the same time his attitude is considered as a defense of the theoretical, rational speech, that is, of episteme. The fundamental argument of Plato’s critique of rhetoric usually is exemplified by the thesis, maintained, among other things, in the Gorgias, that only he who "knows" [epistatai] can speak correctly; for what would be the use of the "beautiful," of the rhetorical speech, if it merely sprang from opinions [doxa], hence from not knowing? … Plato’s … rejection of rhetoric, when understood in this manner, assumes that Plato rejects every emotive element in the realm of knowledge. But in several of his dialogues Plato connects the philosophical process, for example, with eros, which would lead to the conclusion that he attributes a decisive role to the emotive, seen even in philosophy as the absolute science.