Paula Poundstone Quotes

Obama has figured out the best method to prepare the way for his verbal Houdini acts: Use political noise as the tune-up din before the aria. Perhaps his body temperature is so low, it sometimes takes him too long to break out the song.

If you could have imagined that someone is happy that Obama is president, it has to be Jimmy Carter because he is no longer the worst president in our history.

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

Over the centuries, Chinese bureaucrats perfected the dark arts of emptiness to such an extent that when they deliver speeches these days, they often recite verbatim speeches that they have previously delivered, with the sparest of adjustments.

To me, presentations are the most powerful device. You can't really name a movement that didn't start with the spoken word.

I love English. I learned it from the speeches of Winston Churchill.

Mr. Obama has an ingenious approach to job losses: He describes them as job gains.

Obama has become too dependent on formal speeches and set town halls. His idea of mixing it up is taking off his jacket.

There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down. When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I'll just put the stool out there and I'll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn't keep all of the promises he made to everybody.

Hey, I'm not a politician. I'm a ham. I love to give speeches.

No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.

Regan’s greatness as a rhetorician was in his delivery not in the content of what he said as with Churchill and Roosevelt.

Eloquence being, therefore, considered so essential, must always be a great standard of personal merit, a certain road to popular favor, and an universal passport to public honors.

Churchill would spend as many hours practicing as there were minutes in the speech.

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

Senator Obama has been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately, and you know, I couldn’t agree with him more.

There is not alternative to speechwriters. You can’t run for president and write your own speeches.

I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors.

Let me let you in on a secret. I do plan to be on the podium with President Clinton when she's inaugurated in January 2017 - but I'm going to be sitting with the senators.

I happen to have given lots of free speeches.

President Obama's farewell speech soared, towered, dragged. True, it was longer than Reagan's, Clinton's and GWB's speeches combined. If it got any longer, it would have qualified as a third term.

Most of my time at the White House, I wrote very unfunny speeches, but every year, I would work on the correspondents' dinner, which was a reminder of this other kind of writing that I loved to do.

Next week John Boehner will be sitting behind Barack Obama at the State of the Union address. I think Obama should purposely try to embarrass him by telling the story of 'Old Yeller.' The state of our Union is strong, but not so good for one special dog.'

I like that kind of stuff. I like doing speeches. I've been lucky because I've had a lot of characters, over the years, who will have three or four page speeches.