Rhetorical Question Blunder/Quotes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Stephen Fry: And to General Ignorance, where we ask Alan Davies...is this a rhetorical question?
awkward pause
Alan Davies: (hesitantly) No.
another pause
Stephen Fry: Quite right.

QI
Clive Anderson: What's the point of rhetorical questions?
QI

Reg: And what have [the Romans] ever given us in return?
Xerxes: ...The aqueduct?
Reg: What?
Xerxes: The aqueduct.
Reg: Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That's true.
Masked Commando: And the sanitation!
** Much later**
Reg: All right... But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Xerxes: ...Brought peace.
Reg: Oh, peace... Shut up!

Mona Simpson: [singing] How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?
Homer: Seven.
Lisa: No, dad, it's a rhetorical question.
Homer: Rhetorical eh? Eight.
Lisa: Dad, do you even know what "rhetorical" means?
Homer: Do I know what "rhetorical" means?

The Simpsons, "Mother Simpson"

Hobbes: I thought that question was rhetorical.
Calvin: The other way, though!