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• n  a trite or obvious remark

• Rhetoric will get us nowhere as rhetoric is not a promise but a platitude shouted loudly.
• She could take the cruel twist of fate as well as dish it out; she could make the noble platitude of Triumph Through Renunciation seem a little less cloying.
• Even country schoolteachers have outgrown the platitude: "Be good, and maybe you'll grow up to be president.

• cliche
• banality
• commonplace
• bromide

News & Articles

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• Other Views: President Obama's telephone dragnet
  President Obama's telephone dragnet Within hours of the disclosure federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace ...
  June 9, 2013 - Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

Quotes

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• John McCain in Ledger Independent
  McCain cautioned: "To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It's a platitude."
• Kevin Harvick in SpeedwayMedia.com (press release)
  Calling me the best restrictor plate racer is a foregone conclusion,Harvick said. "That's a well-known fact that doesn't even need repeating. Call it a 'restrictor platitude.'" "I've said all along that we're capable of winning the...
• HG Wells in AFP
  Science fiction writer HG Wells said at the time it gave "in one eddying concentration almost every possible foolishness, cliche, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality...