Oratory Quotes

• A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Men, Order, Grace

  Charles Horton Cooley (1964). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.335, Transaction Publishers

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

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Succeed, Delivery, Feels

  BookCaps, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2012). “Faust in Plain and Simple English: First Part of the Tragedy: (A Modern Translation and the Original Version): BookCaps Study Guide”, p.50, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Poesy and oratory omit things not essential, and insert little beautiful digressions, in order to place everything in the most effective light.

  Isaac Watts

  Beautiful, Light, Order

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• Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Men, Vocabulary, Principles

  Sinclair Lewis (2015). “Babbitt”, p.68, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.

  Owen Feltham

  Ignorance, Men, Long

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• Hark to that shrill, sudden shout,
  The cry of an applauding multitude,
  Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields
  The living mass as if he were its soul!

  William C. Bryant

  Soul, Cry, Loud

  William Cullen Bryant, “The Flood Of Years”

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• There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory

  Mark Twain

  Upset, World, Speech

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.452, Courier Corporation

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• ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Cheating, Understanding, Speech

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “The Best Of Ambrose Bierce: The Damned Thing + An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge + The Devil's Dictionary + Chickamauga (4 Classics in 1 Book)”, p.170, e-artnow

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• I have been devoured all my life by an incurable and burning impatience: and to this day find all oratory, biography, operas, films, plays, books, and persons, too long.

  Margot Asquith

  Book, Play, Long

  Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”

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• [Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.

  John Milton

  Italian, Numbers, Long

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• Whatever we conceive well we express clearly, and words flow with ease.
  [Fr., Ce que l'on concoit bien s'enonce clairement,
  Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisement.]

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Ease, Flow, Wells

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• If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Heart, Angel, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.147

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• Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Art, Memories, Air

  Elbert Hubbard (1911). “A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard”

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

  Noam Chomsky

  Skills, Use, Ifs

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• Yet through delivery orators succeed,
  I feel that I am far behind indeed.
  [Ger., Allein der Vortrag macht des Redners Gluck,
  Ich fuhl es wohl noch bin ich weit zuruck.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Succeed, Delivery, Feels

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• All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Speech, Firsts, Public Speaking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.340

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• Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Philosophical, Persuasion, Unbelievable

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• The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Art, Passion, Men

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 572-73, Maxims. No. 9, 1922.

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• The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Persuasion, Power Of Persuasion, Objects

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• 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.

  Plutarch

  Firsts, Action, Thirds

  Plutarch (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Plutarch (Illustrated)”, p.3309, Delphi Classics

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• In oratory the will must predominate.

  David Hare

  Willpower

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• The sense of war, the extraordinary bravery of the Allied armies, the numbers, the losses, the real suffering that disappears in time and commemorative oratory, are not marked out in any red guidebook of the emotions, but they are present if you look.

  John Vinocur

  Real, War, Loss

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• Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

  Emily Post

  Women, Believe, Worry

  EMILY POST (1950). “ETIQUETTE”

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• Next to fried foods, the South has suffered most from oratory.

  Brooks Hays

  Political, Politics, Next

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• There is no true orator who is not a hero.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hero, Orators

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1875). “Letters and Social Aims”, p.94

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