Theodore C. Sorensen Quotes

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

With great writing, there is great clarity.

Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise.

Long speeches work if they’re filled with substance.

President Johnson wanted his speech writers to use words with fou r letters, sentences with four words, and paragraphs with four sentences

Sustentative ideas are more important than applause lines. Substance makes speeches.

Whatever I'm doing, I try to write well. I try to give the reader a nice, clean well-written surface, where the writing is transparent. It probably takes me longer to write things, but it's very important to me that the writing itself be good.

You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

When the mind has grasped the matter, words come like flowers at the call of spring.

Churchill has spent the best years of his life preparing impromptu remarks.

We should not write so that it is possible for [the reader] to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

Political speeches are a particularly low form of rhetoric.

I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence.

I wrote the text of the resignation. I cannot say with precision when, but at the most two weeks before. I wrote it in Latin because something so important you do in Latin. Furthermore, Latin is a language in which I know well how to write in a more appropriate way.

Adverbs lead to overwriting. Try taking them out and reading your prose again to see how it sounds. Simple and less words are more powerful.

People who want to express themselves effectively can learn a lot from the hard-won concision of the copywriter.

I actually think I learned to write concisely working for an encyclopedia company in Chicago.

Root out all the "to be" verbs in your prose and bludgeon them until dead. No "It was" or "they are" or "I am." Don't let it be, make it happen.

I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That doesn't interest me. I want everything to be essential.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

When you catch an adjective, kill it - perhaps the best possible advice for budding writers.

The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.

Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone.

Easy writing's curst hard reading.