Great Oratory Quotes & Sayings

Inspiring leadership communication is not about great oratory or great charisma; rather it is about getting others to believe in themselves and believe in your cause, and then achieve more than they thought was possible. — Kevin Murray

Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die. — Nicolaus Cusanus

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

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. — Elihu Burritt

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

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

The greatest and truest models for all oratorsis Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators. — Woodrow Wilson

All great speakers were bad speakers at first. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wanted to visit the Capitol of our country, the center of our great civilization that stands like the sun in the solar system, sendin' out beams of power and wisdom and law and order, and justice and injustice, and money and oratory, and talk and talk, and wind and everything, to the uttermost points of our vast possessions, and from them clear to the ends of the earth. — Marietta Holley

Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in any
commonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if they
tend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which
they are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready
talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage,
sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body
politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admire
the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do
wrong to the republic. — Theodore Roosevelt

It makes a great difference whether Davus or a hero speaks. — Horace