Oratory Quotes - Page 3

• Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Motivational, Strength

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• Oratory is the art of making a loud noise sound like a deep thought.

  Bennett Cerf

  Art, Teaching, Deep Thought

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• Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory !!

  Winston Churchill

  Men, Talent

  Winston Churchill, Robert Rhodes James (1980). “Churchill speaks: Winston S. Churchill in peace and war : collected speeches, 1897-1963”, Atheneum

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• Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.

  Dorothy Sarnoff

  Meaningful, Listening, Speech

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• Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence.

  John Milton

  Mother, Art, Eye

  Paradise Regained bk. 4, l. 240 (1671)

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• Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Gun, Pigs

  "Cat's Cradle". Book by Kurt Vonnegut (Chapter 114), 1963.

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• Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Vices, Amplification

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.56, Modern Library

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• Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity... but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

  George Chapman

  Meaning Something, Clarity, Dense

  "Ovid's Banquet of Sense". Poem by George Chapman, Preface, 1595.

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• Nothing in oratory is more important than to win for the orator the favour of his hearer, and to have the latter so affected as to be swayed by something resembling an impulse of the spirit impetu quodam animi or emotion perturbatione, rather than by judgment or deliberation. For men decide far more problems by hate, or love, or lust, or rage, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or illusion, or some other inward emotion aliqua permotione mentis, than by reality or authority, or any legal standard, or judicial precedent or statute.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Hate, Winning, Reality

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• Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose--"a power to accomplish all that we undertake;" for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Example, Would Be

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.196

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• When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, 'Action, Action, Action.'

  Plutarch

  Inspiration, Important, Three

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• The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Passion, Men, Persuasive

  "The Moral Maxims and Reflections". Book by François de La Rochefoucauld. Maxim 8, 1678.

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• If you can't write your message in a sentence, you can't say it in an hour.

  Dianna Daniels Booher

  Change, Writing, Messages

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• The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth.

  Aldous Huxley

  Matter, Politician, Clergymen

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• There is nothing like oratory, it is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king.

  Winston Churchill

  Kings, Skills, Turns

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• If you are giving a graduate course you don't try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.

  Noam Chomsky

  Giving, Challenges, Trying

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• Although there are some enormously gifted lecturers and preachers who do create community with oratory, I like to do anything I can to engage my students with each other, with me, and with the subject. And the subject, I think, always has to take prominence.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Thinking, Community, Students

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

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• To find ways of practicing democracy, not ways of orating about it, is our great problem.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Democracy, Way, Problem

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• ... women are more quiet. They don't feel called to mount a barrel and harangue by the hour every time they imagine they have produced an idea.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Ideas, Quiet, Imagine

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.85, Rowman & Littlefield

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• The soul's house is not built on such a convenient plan; there are few soundproof partitions in it. Only when the conviction - not merely the idea - that the demand of the Spirit, however inconvenient, rules the whole of it, will those objectionable noises die down which have a way of penetrating into the nicely furnished little oratory and drowning all the quieter voices by their din.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Ideas, Voice, House

  Evelyn Underhill, Christopher L. Webber (2006). “Advent with Evelyn Underhill”, p.27, Church Publishing, Inc.

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• Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable, nothing so rough and uncultured as not to gain brilliance and refinement from eloquence.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Believe, Gains, Refinement

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• Some of the greatest and most lasting effects of genuine oratory have gone forth from secluded lecture desks into the hearts of quiet groups of students.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Heart, Groups, Gone

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1968). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• Hitler's oratory moved people and appealed to their hopes and dreams. But his speeches malevolently twisted hope into some gnarled ghastly entities, and appealed to the latent, darkest prejudices of Germans.

  Richard M Perloff

  Dream, People, History

  Richard M. Perloff (2017). “The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the Twenty-First Century”, p.279, Taylor & Francis

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• There is an atmosphere of well-sounding oratory that likes to attach itself to dress clothes. Away with it!

  Albert Einstein

  Clothes, Atmosphere, Dresses

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• Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business.

  Mortimer Adler

  Heart, Mind, Insidious

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.194, Simon and Schuster

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