Orators Quotes - Page 4

• No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Poet

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• I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Believe, Book, Learning

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• It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.

  George McGovern

  Men, Good Man, Speak

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• I have not much patience with a certain class of Christians nowadays who will hear anybody preach so long as they can say, 'He is very clever, a fine preacher, a man of genius, a born orator.' Is cleverness to make false doctrine palatable? Why, sirs, to me the ability of a man who preaches error is my sorrow rather than my admiration.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christian, Clever, Men

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• I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall; I'll slay more gazers than the basalisks; I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, Decieve more slily that Ulysses could, And like a Sinon, take another Troy. I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages And set the murderous Machiavel to school. Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut! were it further off, I'll pluck it down.

  William Shakespeare

  School, Color, Play

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• The most significant visions are not cast by great orators from a stage. They are cast at the bedsides of our children. The greatest visioncasting opportunities happen between the hours of 7:30 and 9:30 PM Monday through Sunday. In these closing hours of the day we have a unique opportunity to plant the seeds of what could be and what should be. Take every opportunity you get.

  Andy Stanley

  Monday, Children, Sunday

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• Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.

  Aristophanes

  Long, People, Justice

  Aristophanes (2004). “Plutus (Sparklesoup Classics)”, p.35, Sparklesoup LLC

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• Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Time, Age, May

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.627, Library of America

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• Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, Men, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.90, Harvard University Press

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

  William Hazlitt

  Doe, Public Speaking, Commonplace

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners”

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• The world taught women nothing skillful and then said her work was valueless. It permitted her no opinions and said she did not know how to think. It forbade her to speak in public and said the sex had no orators. It denied her the schools, and said the sex had no genius. It robbed her of every vestige of responsibility, and then called her weak. It taught her that every pleasure must come as a favor from men and when, to gain it, she decked herself in paint and fine feathers, as she had been taught to do, it called her vain.

  Carrie Chapman Catt

  Sex, School, Responsibility

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• Gold is a deep-persuading orator.

  Richard Barnfield

  Gold, Persuading

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• Gold were as good as twenty orators.

  William Shakespeare

  Gold, Twenties

  William Shakespeare, Thomas Dolby (1872). “Dictionary of Shakespearian Quotations: Exhibiting the Most Forcible Passages, Illustrative of the Various Passions, Affections and Emotions of the Human Mind”, p.148

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• A man never becomes an orator if he has anything to say.

  Finley Peter Dunne

  Men, Public Speaking, Ifs

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• I have heard your orators speak on many questions. One among them the so-called vital question of money which is above all things the most coveted commodity but I, as a Jainist, in the name of my countrymen and of my country, would offer you as the medium of the most perfect exchange between us, henceforth and forever, the indestructible, the unchangeable, the universal currency of good will and peace, and this, my brothers and sisters, is a currency that is not interchangeable with silver and gold, it is a currency of the heart, of the good life, of the highest estate on the earth.

  Virchand Gandhi

  Country, Brother, Good Life

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• To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Political, Monarchs, Flatterer

  Thomas Hobbes (1750). “The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...”, p.179

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• A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint, will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. - Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and cringes over the most obstinate and inflexible. - Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens; confounded their statesmen; struck their orators dumb; and at length argued them out of all their liberties.

  Joseph Addison

  Wisdom, Philosophy, Men

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• It is certain that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians, men of the most brilliant and imposing talents, have labored as hard, if not harder, than day laborers; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is that they have taken more pains than other men.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Pain, Taken, Men

  Orison Swett Marden (1907). “The Optimistic Life”

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• Who can wonder at the attractiveness... of the bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator?

  Marsilio Ficino

  Success, Men, Feet

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• The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Silence, Individuality, Speech

  Henry David Thoreau, John C. Broderick, Robert Sattelmeyer (1981). “Journal”, p.114, Princeton University Press

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• A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Self Improvement, Public Speaking, Speaking In Public

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• There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Talking, World, Human Nature

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.169

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• No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Men, America

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.301, Simon and Schuster

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• Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion.

  Aristotle

  Fashion, Tyrants, Government

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.2072, Princeton University Press

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• H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.

  Ben Hecht

  Christian, Art, War

  Ben Hecht (1964). “Letters from Bohemia”

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