Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

Now, you've seen that each one of us have a couple of soapboxes that we like to mount. And after about five minutes of our opinion, then we ask you a question.

I'm a talker. I love a good debate.

A debate is a very specific kind of performance.

This trial has developed in the most remarkable manner, the insane love of speaking among public men. We are wading knee deep in words, words, words ….

A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience. Modern society is too vast and too restless to give a conversationalist a fair chance.

The very essence of modern life is the opportunity for people everywhere to speak, hear, persuade, change their minds, know what others are thinking, and think for themselves.

I embark upon discussion and argument with great ease and liberty

Debate is the death of conversation.

Conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavor at effect.

I'm not terribly fond of soapboxes.

I just talk just to talk. I like to see what other people think. There's some things somebody tweets me every day where I'm like, 'Wow, I never thought of this issue that way.' It starts great conversation with people who I would never get a chance to actually communicate with.

I love conversation and the sharing of different thoughts and philosophies. That kind of stuff always makes me happy. I don't mind interviews, either - I like doing them.

I think of fans like a barbershop. I want that debate.

I made lots of talks and challenged lots of people.

I often begin a thought with spirit and finish it with nonsense. The chain of my argument often escapes me, and when lost can seldom be retrieved. These faults are so overpowering that I should sink into perpetual silence were it not that sometimes in ardor of debate, when my feelings are wound up to a high tone, elocution pours itself along with unusual rapidity, and I have passages which would not shame a good speaker; this is the only thing that makes me tolerable to others or to myself.

I never spoke to this many Yankees at one time.

The practice of public speaking flourishes in every peaceful and free state.

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

William Jennings Bryan is a much better orator than I am. I have to think.

We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say.

The purpose of oratory or philosophy [is to] respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.

Political speeches are a particularly low form of rhetoric.

Philosophy is a performance sport - you have to play it with somebody back and forth.

I can give a speech, and I can do a rally, and I do them, but that's not what I like to do.

I like plays where people talk a lot. Conversation is sustained. Argument is sustained.