Speech Delivery Quotes

A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken that by the written word, and that every great movement on this globe owes its rise to the great speakers and not to the great writers.

I have never knowingly made a non-controversial speech in my life.

… a style of oratory that I never heard equaled in this or any other country

An orator is a good man who is skilled in speaking.

Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity.

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.

My early years as a 'speaker' involved note cards that shook like a leaf while I held them because I was so nervous.

Regardless of how lyrical or rhetorically gifted they are in conveying big ideas, any candidate can do a good job of giving a speech if the goal of a speech is more than just delivering it well but achieving some end, whether it's convincing people of some issue or persuading them about you as a person.

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action.

Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne.

The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

I'm a presenter.

To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop.

A lot of people think that public speaking means that you are standing at a podium giving a speech, but public speaking comes in lots of different formats.

If the people in the audience are talking, you're being ignored. If the people are gazing at you, you've got something they want to hear.

A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.

Always, with speeches, I feel like it's an opportunity to say something.

Being a comfortable public speaker, which involves easily being able to go off-script, strongly signals competence.

An orator is a man who says what he thinks and feels what he says.

I've been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it's not what people are used to-it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.

I wonder what my speech would be.

To me, the most telling thing is we have a man [Donald Trump] who cannot complete a sentence.