ISBN 9781913260576 (paperback), 236 pages

Finalist, The Independent Author Network 2025 Book Awards

The highest higher education. Outsmart everyone. Outspeak anyone.

Aristotle defined man as a thinking, speaking animal, or zoon logon echon, and also as a political animal, or zoon politikon.

Every fool can think and speak, or so they think, but you’ll be far ahead by taking a few tips from the greatest minds that ever lived.

How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero may look like two books in one, one on thinking and another on speaking. It is, in fact, more than that, since it also looks at the close but fraught relationship between these two profoundly, pre-eminently human activities.

Thinking, however brilliant it may be, is of little use unless it can be communicated to others in such a way that they will be carried by it. Compared to reason, rhetoric may be cheap and manipulative. But it is a necessary evil if we are to achieve worthwhile aims in the world, or simply counter the destructive tendencies of the modern sophists.

Although he had scant regard for sophists and other self-interested bamboozlers, Plato did concede that truth is more persuasive when allied with rhetoric, and that dialectic and rhetoric ought to go hand in hand, since ‘he who would deceive others, and not be deceived, must exactly know the real likenesses and differences of things.’

Do you want to have all the best arguments? Do you want others to buy into them? Do you want to make an even greater impact and difference? In which case, start reading.

In this book, you’ll learn:

• What it really takes to be a good thinker.
• Why persuasion is about a lot more than mere argument.
• How to build emotion into your arguments.
• How to be funny without trying.
• How to speak with style.
• How to show up your opponent.
• How to deal with a bullsh*tter.
• And much more.

Editorial reviews

Concise and accessible, insightful and thought-provoking. Aristotle’s thoughts on politics round off an outstanding book that is highly recommended.
—Readers’ Favorite

A brilliant synthesis of classical philosophy and rhetoric that is urgently needed in this age of misinformation.
—KC Finn, USA Today best-selling author

Whether you’re a novice or someone already knee-deep in debate, this is a guide for everyone.
—Jamie Michele, award-winning author

A surprisingly engaging and relevant look at the wisdom of the ancients.
—CR Hurst, author and teacher of writing

Burton seeks to bridge the gap between ancient philosophy and modern challenges, offering insights that resonate deeply in today’s troubled world.
—Plato’s Academy Centre

Contents list

Introduction

Part I: How to Think

1. Arguments
2. Fallacies
3. Self-Deception
4. Cognitive Biases
5. Reason
6. Knowledge
7. Science
8. Intuition
9. Emotion
10. Imagination
11. Wisdom
12. Plato’s Cave

Part II: How to Speak

13. Rhetoric Versus Dialectic
14. Gorgias and Greek Rhetoric
15. Cicero and Roman Rhetoric
16. Ethos and Decorum
17. Pathos
18. Kairos
19. The Five Canons and Six Parts
20. Rhetorical Devices
21. Opening and Closing
22. Planning and Preparing
23. Practicalities
24. Killer Moves and Quagmires

◆ Grab your copy now for the ultimate classical, liberal education that we never got.

Intelligence without eloquence is impotence, but eloquence without intelligence is worse than silence.

Language is a slave of desire and source of confusion, which is why the Buddha often kept silent. But had the Buddha never spoken, or at least written, we would not have known of his beautiful and powerful ideas. 

Knowledge, as they say, is power. But words are how we use, or exploit, or share, that power. The greatest knowledge is the knowledge of knowledge, without which we would have nothing worth saying. But the second greatest knowledge is the knowledge of words, without which we would not be able to say it. 

In Plato’s Philebus, the sophist Protarchus tells Socrates:

I have often heard Gorgias [a famous sophist] maintain that the art of persuasion far surpassed every other; this, as he says, is by far the best of them all, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will.

In 1897, at the age of 22, Winston Churchill wrote:

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. Abandoned by his party, betrayed by his friends, stripped of his offices, whoever can command this power is still formidable.

During the Second World War, the Free World’s most powerful weapon was not the atomic bomb, but Churchill’s rhetoric—while, by some accounts, it was through the mouth that his defeated foe shot himself. 

What a waste that so many who can think cannot speak, and so many who can speak cannot think, when, really, these two things ought to go hand in hand—or side by side, as they do in this book.