Jonathan Swift Quotes
Your tongue runs before your wit.
Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, Irish Satirist and Protestant Cleric, Dean, Dublin Cathedral, Criticism of a contemporary politician, Quoted in James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations, 1899
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The majority leader was known for shooting from the hip. He had recently made one incorrect and embarrassing statements. His aide asked him why.
Roosevelt himself was a great orator and there were many who thought those same terms might apply to him.
One of the reason’s that TR was so popular was that he was a very candid, clear and dynamic speaker who always said what he meant and meant what he said.
Few politicians take this advice.
This is one of the great political putdowns in history. He in effect called Dundas a liar without ever being overt or nasty.
Ryan told the national audience that President Obama had come to a factory in his district that as rumored to be closed. Obama had told the workers that the Federal government could assist and keep the factory open for many years. Then as Ryan explained, the factory closed the following year. He gave this as an example of Obama not keeping his word. However what Ryan did not say was that Obama had made the speech at the factory when he was a candidate for the Presidency, and then the factory was closed while George W. Bush was President and by the time he took office, the closure was done and the factory machines gone. And when Obama took office, our national economy was within days of complete bank and finance collapse. Obama saved most of the banks and then the American automobile industry. To suggest that Obama could have or should have done something for the factory that closed was shockingly misleading. It would have been a minor issue if some party hack had lied and made the same accusation. But this was the Vice Presidential Candidate whose acceptance speech was assumedly vetted by the Presidential Candidate’s staff. That is why the quotation was so memorable.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield. O’Connell was an Irishman.
Everett, considered a great orator, spoke at Gettysburg before Lincoln, but he went on for 2 hours. Hardly anyone recalls his speech. His complement was contemporary praise indeed and right on in the view of Americans of future generations.
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
