Oratorical Skill Quotes

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!

Polk...is just qualified for an eminent County Court lawyer....He has no wit, no literature, no point of argument, no gracefulness of delivery, no eloquence of language, no philosophy, no pathos, no felicitous impromptus; nothing that can constitute an orator, but confidence, fluency, and labor.

Henry Clay's eloquence did not consist, as many fine specimens of eloquence do, of types and figures, of antitheses and elegant arrangements of words and sentences, but rather of that deeply earnest and impassioned tone and manner which can proceed only through conviction in the speaker of the justice and importance of his cause. This it is that truly touches the chords of sympathy; and those who heard Mr. Clay never failed to be moved by it, or ever after forgot the impression. All his [oratorical] efforts were made for practical effect. He never spoke merely to be heard.

I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if Europe has furnished more eminent, to produce a single passage superior to the speech of Logan

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

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstone … Whether Prime Minister, or leaders of opposition, whether preaching or praying, speechifying or scribbling—never a gentlemen!

The bucolic mind of East Barsetshire took warm delight in the eloquence of the eminent personage who represented them, but was wont to extract more actual enjoyment from the music of his periods than from the strength of his arguments.

I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth.

All the working-class people could feel a Malcolm X. They could hear Malcolm X, and two weeks later they could whisper back what he said. Verbatim. They could remember the way he put it, and he put it so well.

Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill.