Speech Writing Quotes

I don't have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

I think almost every political leader is always told that the next speech they make is the most crucial one.

[Critiquing the Gettysburg Address:] We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp.

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.

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.

William Jennings Bryan is a much better orator than I am. I have to think.

To address crowds and make promises does not require very much brains

On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say.

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

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

No, and in fact I get a bit frustrated, because I'm actually quite good at one-liners, and I've had hundreds of them over the years, and they sink without trace, and I get very frustrated. Every party conference I really work on the speeches, and I always have two or three things I'm quite proud of, and no one ever remembers them.

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

Every writer has to write his speech.

I wonder what my speech would be.

One of the areas I have a little less confidence in is giving any kind of a speech.

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.

A candidate for office can have no greater advantage than muddled syntax; no greater liability than a command of language.

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.

Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union.

When every high school graduate can spell the word, 'inauguration,' let's put lampshades on our heads and listen to his speeches until Obama's voice gives out.

When you're putting together a campaign for president, like I've been, that entails a lot of time. It's not like I've been at the beach sipping a pina colada.

Words do not necessarily make us moral. And there have been presidents before who have stumbled over syntax and looked foolish when the words they have been forced to speak have been their own. But Trump is uniquely stunted. A child listening to two of his speeches could reproduce a third without the use of a dictionary.

I enjoy my public speaking. That's what I love doing. It's what I'm good at.