Speechwriters Quotes

Remember those great speeches MacArthur made from the Philippines? I wrote all those.

Politicians can’t just point to problems. They need to propose solutions.

There is not alternative to speechwriters. You can’t run for president and write your own speeches.

The speechwriter’s very existence is an affront to the politician, because it intimates that the politician is too lazy or stupid to decide what it is he is going to say…. By giving the politician something to say the speechwriter suggests by implication that the politician has nothing to say. So a politician is generally a little resentful toward and ashamed of his speechwriter—not ashamed of the particular person holding the job, simply of the fact that the job exists.

McKinley did not once give a speech to the nation without either wiring, telephoning or writing me, and sending me his speeches before delivering them.

You could never write for me. You're too liberal. But you're fine for Jack.

One of your jobs as a speechwriter is to transform the bureaucratic into the poetic.

Don't I deserve just as much credit for picking out the man who could write it?

We don’t get to use our names, but we do get to fight for our beliefs.