Making Speeches Quotes & Sayings

I thought making speeches for money was a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company, as so many people who leave public life do. — Hillary Clinton

I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches. — Patricia Highsmith

All the other candidates are making speeches about how much they have done for their country, which is ridiculous. I haven't done anything yet, and I think it's just common sense to send me to Washington and make me do my share. — Gracie Allen

The idealism and adorability of Rob Lowe and Bradley Whitford had made me long for a civic-minded beau who is constantly making long, important speeches and taking principled stands. — Mindy Kaling

But all the long speeches, all the interminable days and hours that people had spent talking about my soul, had left me with the impression of a colorless swirling river that was making me dizzy. — Albert Camus

I shouldn't want you to be surprised, or to draw any particular inference from my making speeches, or not making speeches, out there. I don't recall any candidate for President that ever injured himself very much by not talking. — Calvin Coolidge

These were in the days before anybody thought to criticize Congressmen, let alone first ladies, for making money on speeches. So Eleanor raked in quite a bit of cash that she may have put, for all I know, to good uses, or maybe not. I just don't know. But I don't think she was any great literary breakthrough. — William A. Rusher

The best feeling in the world is performing in front of a live audience who like what you're doing. I can understand why people become dictators just because of the thrill they get making the speeches. — Steve Coogan

Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work. — Alan Bullock

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth. — Steve Wynn

I've found that festivals are a relatively painless way to meet people and make a few points that need making, without having to hit them over the head with too many speeches. — Pete Seeger

Political leaders normally act by making convincing speeches. — Helmut Schmidt

I get terrified the first day I'm on a film set. I get nervous walking down a red carpet. I find making speeches the most terrifying thing in the world. — Catherine Zeta-Jones

I'm suffering from stage fright. I don't like making speeches. I'm the kind of introvert actor who likes putting on other people's clothes and pretending to be somebody else, which is completely crazy choice of profession. So, I don't enjoy public speaking and I have every sympathy for anyone who has to do it and doesn't enjoy it. — Helena Bonham Carter

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

Humans have changed little over time. We think we've invented the modern world but they were making better speeches 2,000 years ago and grappling with issues of empire and terrorism. — Robert Harris

Anybody who talks about the future is a bastard, it's the present that counts. Invoking posterity is like making speeches to worms. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I travel all over the country making speeches for people I believe in. — Ann Richards

What is war?' I asked.
Oh, it's a messy, stupid business,' he said, 'Two sides wave flags and beat drums and shoot one another dead. It always begins this way, making speeches, talking about rights, and all that sort of thing.'
But what is it for? What do they get out of it?'
I don't know,' he said. 'To tell you the truth, I don't think they know themselves. — Hugh Lofting

I hate crowds and making speeches. I hate facing cameras and having to answer to a crossfire of questions. Why popular fancy should seize upon me, a scientist, dealing in abstract things and happy if left alone, is a manifestation of mass psychology that is beyond me. — Albert Einstein

I felt bad because Little Big Tom came in while we were making the tape and was like over the moon because he thought we were interested in his music. We had to humor him and listen to him deliver around six hundred speeches about fusion and the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Chicano and Latino influences on pretentious jazzy pseudorock. I think it was probably the happiest I'd ever seen him. And I also felt bad about the fact that after he left we kind of made fun of the funny way he said Latino, like he was the Frito Bandito or something. I felt bad, but I did it anyway, because I'm only human. I was ashamed of myself and depressed afterward, though, which is human, too, I guess. Being human is an excuse for just about everything, but it also kind of sucks in a way. — Frank Portman

I am notorious for making impassioned speeches about things nobody cares about. — Mindy Kaling

The best way we can honor the pioneers - the best way for us to repay our debt of gratitude to them - goes beyond making and hearing speeches, marching in parades, or attending fireworks celebrations.
The best way we can show our gratitude is by incorporating into our own lives the faithfulness to God's commandments, the compassion and love for our fellowmen, the industry, optimism, and joy the pioneers demonstrated so well in their own lives. — President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Love unspoken is the most tremendous force in the world. One is amazed at the way in which people waste their time making speeches, agitating, praying, even. They might save their breath. The great lovers of the world, in silence, rule the world. — Mary Webb

Her speeches were about the sanctity of the home, about how women should stay home. Serena Joy didn't do this herself, she made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice she was making for the good of all. — Margaret Atwood

Since 1972, I've been going around making speeches on the Everglades. — Marjory Stoneman Douglas

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

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. — Peter F. Drucker

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in. — H.L. Mencken

Thady begins his memoirs of the Rackrent Family by dating MONDAY MORNING, because no great undertaking can be auspiciously commenced in Ireland on any morning but MONDAY MORNING. 'Oh, please God we live till Monday morning, we'll set the slater to mend the roof of the house. On Monday morning we'll fall to, and cut the turf. On Monday morning we'll see and begin mowing. On Monday morning, please your honour, we'll begin and dig the potatoes,' etc.
All the intermediate days, between the making of such speeches and the ensuing Monday, are wasted: and when Monday morning comes, it is ten to one that the business is deferred to THE NEXT Monday morning. The Editor knew a gentleman, who, to counteract this prejudice, made his workmen and labourers begin all new pieces of work upon a Saturday. — Maria Edgeworth

Making clever speeches takes a lot of work and a lot of time. — Elaine Stritch

It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life. — Anthony Trollope