Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape now let it fall - HUNGH

Some of the greatest and most lasting effects of genuine oratory have gone forth from secluded lecture desks into the hearts of quiet groups of students.

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action.

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiargift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease.

Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.

When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, 'Action, Action, Action.'

An orator is a good man who is skilled in speaking.

Churchill wrote his own speeches. When a leader does that, he becomes emotionally invested with his utterances...If Churchill had had a speech write in 1940, Britain would be speaking German today.

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory !!

To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop.

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

In oratory the will must predominate.

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

… a style of oratory that I never heard equaled in this or any other country

The gifts of nature are necessary; but they are not sufficient to make a complete orator without art and study.

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

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

This fellow has a silver tongue

There is no power like oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears, Cicero by . . . swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished; that of the other continues to this day.

Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on.

Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable, nothing so rough and uncultured as not to gain brilliance and refinement from eloquence.

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.

The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly.

The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction.