Richard Barnfield Quotes

Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master.

The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

I wish I could talk like Donald Trump or Steve Wynn. Hell, I'd love it.

Some eloquence is like a magic.

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker.

I could sway people with words—words that welled up within me.

Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable …

An orator is a man who says what he thinks and feels what he says.

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne.

Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. There is one of whom we took no note, but on a certain occasion it appears that he has a secret virtue never suspected - that he can paint what has occurred and what must occur, with such clearness to a company, as if they saw it done before their eyes. By leading their thought he leads their will, and can make them do gladly what an hour ago they would not believe that they could be led to do at all.

The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.

I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken that by the written word, and that every great movement on this globe owes its rise to the great speakers and not to the great writers.

There is nothing like oratory, it is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king.

In oratory the will must predominate.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.

Most people don't have the power of persuasion.

Who does not delight in oratory? How we gather to hear even an ordinary speaker! How often is a jury swayed and controlled by the appeals of counsel!

You have to be able to enthral and persuade at the same time.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

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.