Oratorical Skills 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.

The description was elaborate, the Senator himself suggesting some of the nicer touches, and every line of it was written and on its way to New York before Mr. Seward had uttered a word in the Senate Chamber.

It is much better when a member resumes his seat after he has made a speech for the House to have the feeling that they wish he had gone on longer instead of wondering why he did not stop sooner.

From the depths of the West of Europe, a young child will be born of poor people, he who by his tongue will seduce a great troop; his fame will increase towards the realm of the East.

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.

Obama spoke so slowly because he, a clever and cultured man, had constantly to be on his guard against sounding it.

Obama isn't good off the cuff, especially when challenged; he is far better with a prepared speech.

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

Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men; and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,--that they shall hear worse orators than themselves.

A podium is something you walk up to, you say what you want to say and when you're finished, you leave.

A campaign appearance is judged much like that of an actor. Is the performance persuasive? Not what is said, and I find that too bad.

Obama is a very good actor. He knows how to play it. And he is very adept at creating this 'Obama' - this character who is there whenever the world needs something.

The more I read about the rules the great orators used, the more I realised, of course, this is how you stir people's hearts, and you persuade and cajole and move people out of fixed positions. The techniques are quite menacingly easy.

When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

Words impress me. If a man can speak eloquently and beautifully to me, I just melt on the floor.

Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.

Most people don't know what it's like to stand up there and speak their mind. I have a venue to do that. I get paid to do that. It's not like I'm doing heavy lifting up there. It's not like I'm solving the world's problems. It's like I'm hanging out with a bunch of people and it's cool.

My dad was just so charismatic and witty. One day, I hope people say that I was just as good as my dad on the mic in my own way. I will never be saying 'Space Mountain' or 'limousine riding,' but I hope people say I can control an audience, that I was as captivating as him.

A president, however, must stand somewhat apart, as all great presidents have known instinctively. Then the language which has the power to survive its own utterance is the most likely to move those to whom it is immediately spoken.

The essence of debate in Parliament is spontaneous.

Remarkably, [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein was reading her statement. So her mare's-nest of inapposite words and unclear thoughts cannot be excused as symptoms of Biden's Disease, that form of logorrhea that causes victims, such as Sen. Joe Biden, to become lost on the syntactical back roads of their extemporaneous rhetoric.

After one of his [Hubert Humphrey] long-winded harangues I suggested he had probably been vaccinated with a phonograph needle. He responded by saying that I would have been a great success in the movies working for Eighteenth Century-Fox.

Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,--a certain robust and radiant physical health; or--shall I say?--great volumes of animal heat.

I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty ... as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize.