Here’s ancient Greek sophist Gorgias on the important of being good with words (taken from Enconium of Helen of Troy, translated by George A. Kennedy):
Speech is a powerful lord that with the smallest and most invisible body accomplishes the most god-like works. It can banish fear and remove grief and instil pleasure and enhance pity. […] Divine sweetness transmitted through words is inductive of pleasure, and reductive of pain. Thus entering into the opinion of the soul the force of incantation is wont to beguile and persuade and alter it by witchcraft, and the two arts of witchcraft and magic are errors of the soul and deceivers of opinion.
Here’s economist and historian Deirdre N. McCloskey on a similar theme (taken from Talking Capitalism: Schumpeter and Galbraith):
Schumpeter and Galbraith spanned the range in the last century from moderate conservative to moderate socialist. These two men of clever words, both master rhetoricians, laid out the case for and the case against unregulated capitalism. […] Regulated or not, though, […] capitalism hangs on words. […] Case-making with sweet words is how business decisions are made. It’s how regulatory agencies do their jobs, too, and how you shop for furniture. It’s how economic scientists persuade. It’s how managers in a free society manage. Talk, talk, talk. Rhetoric rules.
rdn32 