Oratory Quotes - Page 4

• Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,--a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Rifles, Speech

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1206, Delphi Classics

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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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• There is something in the American project, something in simple American oratory, something in the hope and idealism of this frustrating and contradictory nation that still makes my spirits soar and my heart leap with optimism and belief. If only they understood how to make a cup of tea.

  Stephen Fry

  Heart, Simple, Optimism

  Stephen Fry, Vanda Vucicevic (2008). “Stephen Fry in America”, Harpercollins Pub Ltd

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• We may make an oratory of our heart wherein to retire from time to time to converse with Him in meekness, humility, and love. Every one is capable of such familiar conversation with God, some more, some less. He knows what we can do. Let us begin, then.

  Brother Lawrence

  Heart, Humility, And Love

  Brother Lawrence (2012). “The Practice of the Presence of God and The Spiritual Maxims”, p.29, Courier Corporation

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Why do you think great leaders and great orations are coincident with wars, revolutions, and the founding or ending of governments and states? Common interests then are so clear that speeches are effortlessly drawn, but at present neither the facts nor the consequences are sufficiently clear to make oratory legitimate. This is the kind of war that will wind on and make fools of its partisans and opponents both.

  Mark Helprin

  War, Thinking, Government

  Mark Helprin (2005). “A Soldier of the Great War”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Forget, Forget Him, Eloquence

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• It is a truism, of course, that in "democratic" states the populace must be encouraged to imagine that it makes important decisions by voting, and must therefore be controlled by suitable propaganda, which implants ideas to which the voters respond as automatically as trained animals respond to words of command in a circus, thus leaving to the masses only a factitious choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the basis of their preference for a certain kind of oratory, a hair-style, or a particular facial expression.

  Revilo P. Oliver

  Animal, Expression, Ideas

  "Revised Historiography". "Liberty Bell" Magazine, April 1980.

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• Why do you rant and brag with such a spate of words, as if you wanted to overwhelm me with a sort of tempest and deluge of oratory-which nevertheless falls with the greater force on your own head, while my ark rides aloft in safety?

  Martin Luther

  Fall, Safety, Ark

  Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Ernest Gordon Rupp, Philip Saville Watson (1969). “Luther and Erasmus: free will and salvation”

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• A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Native American, Men, White Man

  Henry David Thoreau (1974). “The correspondence of Henry David Thoreau”, Greenwood Pub Group

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• Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage.

  George Saintsbury

  Savages, Literature, Prose

  George Saintsbury (1934). “A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day”

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• He would be laughed at, that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger, at past fifty. And he will not have much better success, who shall endeavour, at that age, to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory.

  John Locke

  Country, Men, Past

  John Locke (1828). “An essay concerning human understanding ... The twentieth edition, etc”, p.537

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