Oratory Quotes - Page 4

• Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Drama, Delay, Metaphysical

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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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• That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Country, Truth

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.177, David M Gross

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• The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Style, Speech

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.516, Simon and Schuster

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• Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world.

  Winston Churchill

  Kings, Independent, Men

  Winston S. Churchill (2013). “Churchill By Himself”, p.133, RosettaBooks

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• Who does not delight in oratory? How we gather to hear even an ordinary speaker! How often is a jury swayed and controlled by the appeals of counsel!

  David Josiah Brewer

  Often Is, Ordinary, Doe

  David Josiah Brewer, Edward Archibald Allen, William Schuyler (1899). “The World's best orations: from the earliest period to the present time”

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• For the individual, as I can testify, a brief grounding in semantics, besides making philosophy unreadable, makes unreadable most political speeches, classical economic theory, after-dinner oratory, diplomatic notes, newspaper editorials, treatises on pedagogics and education, expert financial comment, dissertations on money and credit, accounts of debates, and Great Thoughts from Great Thinkers in general. You would be surprised at the amount of time this saves.

  Stuart Chase

  Philosophy, Political, Speech

  Stuart Chase (2015). “Tyranny of Words”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Very few Black people ever embraced back to Africa movements, and very few actually, a tiny number actually went back to Africa. They said, "We are going to make America live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States." They produced one of the world's great cultures; they produced individuals who were just as brilliant and made contributions to the world civilization. In fact, they produced a world-class civilization, the African American civilization, in music, in dance, in oratory, in religion, in writing.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Writing, Civilization, Class

  "Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. October 21, 2013.

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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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• 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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• 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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• God looks not at the oratory of your prayers, how elegant they may be; nor at the geometry of your prayers, how long they may be; nor at the arithmetic of your prayers, how many they may be; not at logic of your prayers, how methodical they may be; but the sincerity of them he looks at.

  Thomas Brooks

  Prayer, Long, Looks

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• An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory.

  Oscar Wilde

  Ornaments

  Oscar Wilde “The Picture of Dorian Gray - and more”, Eighty Pence Books

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• The art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In this line antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation; I should consider the speeches of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as pre-eminent specimens of logic, taste, and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare, leaves not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Art, Taste, Firsts

  "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson". Book by Thomas Jefferson, p. 30, 1904.

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• In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

  Jonathan Swift

  Art, Public Speaking, Art Is

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols (1801). “The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin”, p.8

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• There's a wideness in God's mercy Like the wideness of the sea Oratory Hymns.

  Frederick William Faber

  Sea, Hymns, Mercy

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• He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Forget, Forget Him, Eloquence

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• There is no power like oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears, Cicero by . . . swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished; that of the other continues to this day.

  Henry Clay

  Fear, Passion, Men

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• None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Love, Heart, Eye

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.34

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• I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Energy, Rooms, Facts

  Sinclair Lewis (2002). “Arrowsmith: Elmer Gantry ; Dodsworth”

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• Will this massive outcry [about pollution] continue long enough to have effective results? Will federal and state laws be enacted with effective enforcement clauses? Will people be concerned long enough to pay the bill through higher prices? Will towns tole lost jobs when it proves too costly to clean obsolete plants?... I think so, but it sure won't be as easy as the present outcry and political oratory suggest. The answers to preserving a livable environment are not all simple, and some of the nuts now pushing simplistic cure-alls won't help bring about any lasting solutions.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Nature, Jobs, Thinking

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• When was the last time you heard an insightful, inspiring piece of oratory from an Australian political leader, an appeal to what is pure and true within humanity: a statement of belief backed by ideas for change betterment, a call to those immutable values wherein lie the potential greatness of people individually and collectively? Such exhortation, such leadership is lamentably scarce.

  Michael Short

  Leadership, Lying, Greatness

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• Literary qualifications have no more to do with it than oratory has with salesmanship. One must be able to express himself briefly, clearly, and convincingly, just as a salesman must.

  Claude C. Hopkins

  Able, Qualifications, Salesmanship

  Dr. Robert C. Worstell, Claude C. Hopkins, John E. Kennedy, Albert D. Lasker “Scientific Advertising Origins”, Lulu.com

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• The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Ornaments, May, Matter

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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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