Quotes & Sayings About Oratory

The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him. — Thomas Carlyle

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life. — Jonathan Swift

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

Here,for the last time together,appeared a triumvirate of old men,relics of a golden age,who still towered like giants above creatures of a later time:Webster,the kind of senator that Richard Wagner might have created at the height of his powers;Calhoun,the most majestic champion of error since Milton's Satan in Paridise Lost;and Clay,the old Conciliator, who had already saved the union twice and now came out of retirement to save it with his silver voice and his master touch once again before he died. — David M. Potter

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

I may not be skilled at eloquent oratory , but for muttering angrily under one's breath, I have never met a more capable man. — Eli Brown

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

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

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

The English Language is my bitch. Or I don't speak it very well. Whatever. — Joss Whedon

If nothing else, my analysis of George W.'s oratory style had taught me that a sincere countenance and a confident stance were sufficient to distract your audience from the fact that you were talking rubbish. — Colin Cotterill

He..said..in the oratory to which he was prone that they had witnessed a thing against which time would not prevail. He meant a thing to be remembered, but the young apostate by the rail at his elbow had already begun to sicken at the slow seeping of life. He could see the shape of the skull through the old man's flesh. Hear sand in the glass. Lives running out like something foul, night-soil from a cesspipe, a measured dripping in the dark. The clock has run, the horse has run, and which has measured which? — Cormac McCarthy

In the world of oratory, the cunning atheist declares himself a believer so as to preserve access to the rich fund of tales from religious texts and to powerful concepts like God, fate, angels, the soul, & the afterlife. — Agona Apell

The aim of our orator, then, when speaking of things that are just and holy and good--and he should not speak of anything else--the aim, as I say, that he pursues to the best of his ability when he speaks of these things is to be listened to with understanding, with pleasure, and with obedience. He should be in no doubt that any ability he has and however much he has derives more from his devotion to prayer than his dedication to oratory; and so, by praying for himself and for those he is about to address, he must become a man of prayer before becoming a man of words. — Augustine Of Hippo

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place. — Samuel Johnson

I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of women in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

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

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

In oratory affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn. — Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert Of Cherbury

Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master. — David Josiah Brewer

Let us never forget that, to be profited, that is, to be spiritually improved in knowledge, faith, holiness, joy and love, is the end of hearing sermons, and not merely to have our taste gratified by genius, eloquence and oratory. — John Angell James

Poesy and oratory omit things not essential, and insert little beautiful digressions, in order to place everything in the most effective light. — Isaac Watts

Every public speaker likes his hearer to imagine his oratory as an unpremeditated gift of nature, and not the result of prolonged and patient study [Lionel Logue said] — Mark Logue

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

A good turnout at church today. It had nothing to do with the mild weather and a desire to gossip and everything to do with my oratory skills, I am perfectly convinced. Indeed, if not for Mrs Attwood's new bonnet, I would have had the ladies' undivided attention. The gentlemen I was more certain of. They had no interest in bonnets, new or otherwise, and listened in pleasing silence, broken only by an occasional snore. — Amanda Grange

The scientific dictator of tomorrow will set up his whispering machines and subliminal projectors in schools and hospitals (children and the sick are highly suggestible), and in all public places where audiences can be given a preliminary softening up by suggestibility-increasing oratory or rituals. — Aldous Huxley

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

With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble. — Victor Hugo

Oratory is the highest form of music — Agona Apell

We must insist that free oratory is only the beginning of free speech; it is not the end, but a means to an end. The end is to find the truth. The practical justification of civil liberties is not that self-expression is one of the rights of man. It is that the examination of opinion is one of the
necessities of man. For experience tells us that it is only when freedom of opinion becomes the compulsion to debate that the seed which our fathers planted has produced its fruit. When that is
understood, freedom will be cherished not because it is a vent for our opinions but because it is the surest method of correcting them. — Walter Lippmann

There is never any lack at Athens of tongues ready and willing to stir up the passions of the common people; this kind of oratory is nurtured by the applause of the mob in all free communities; but this is especially true of Athens, where eloquence has the greatest influence. — Livy

If you can't write your message in a sentence, you can't say it in an hour. — Dianna Daniels Booher

The Montgomery bus boycott would have happened without King, but King's oratory helped to ensure that the boycott came one of those exceptional local movements for justice that would send ripples of inspiration to oppressed people everywhere. — Troy Jackson

Oratory is just like prostitution: you must have little tricks. — Vittorio Emanuele Orlando

A bigot is a stone-deaf orator. — Kahlil Gibran

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

[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as ... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. — John Milton

It is easy to raise a laugh, but dangerous, for it is the greatest test of an orator's control of his audience to be able to land them again on the solid earth of sober thinking. — Russell H. Conwell

Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening. — Dorothy Sarnoff

Preaching' is common, oral, gospel proclamation by the entire church. It is not, and never was, pulpit oratory. In the New Testament, the word 'preaching' is almost never used to describe discipleship sermons within the four walls of a building. It is missionary proclamation to lost people out in the world. The audience is generally a group of people who have not been introduced to the Savior. — Daniel Sheard

Thucydides, distrusting the clever oratory in the popular assembly, saw a frustrated populace gullibly following those orators who promised solutions which at first sight were pleasant but eventually disastrous. Both — Ernst Breisach

265. "Let the oratory be what it is called, and let nothing else be done or stored there. When the work of God is finished, let all go out with the deepest silence and let reverence be shown to God."~ — St. Benedict

Talent for oratory can simulate the need for action and even thought. — Barbara W. Tuchman

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

My parents aren't artists or anything, but growing up in Wales, especially in a Welsh language school and community, they have this thing called the Eisteddfod where people compete in singing and acting and dancing and oratory all sorts of things. From a very young age, it's been a part of my upbringing. — Iwan Rheon

The orator is the mouth (os) of a nation. — Philibert Joseph Roux

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

When we preach or teach the Scriptures, we open the door for the Holy Spirit to do His work. God has not promised to bless oratory or clever preaching. He has promised to bless His Word. — Billy Graham

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

I don't have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had. — Noam Chomsky

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art. — Jonathan Swift

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

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

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

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

Discipline is the greatest weapon against the self-righteous. We must measure the virtue of our own controlled response when answering the atrocities of fanatics. And yet, let it not be claimed, in our own oratory of piety, that we are without our own fanatics; for the self-righteous breed wherever tradition holds, and most often when there exists the perception that tradition is under assault. Fanatics can be created as easily in an environment of moral decay (whether real or imagined) as in an environment of legitimate inequity or under the banner of a common cause.
Discipline is as much facing the enemy within as the enemy before you; for without critical judgment, the weapon you wield delivers- and let us not be coy here- naught but murder.
And its first victim is the moral probity of your cause. — Steven Erikson

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory. — Mark Twain

Yeats was 18th-century oratory, almost. — Seamus Heaney

The loudmouthed pervert loudly, pervertedly, strode in, spewing his loud, perverted oratory the entire way. It — Satoshi Wagahara

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

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

There is no true orator who is not a hero. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone. — Charles Churchill

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

These are the three things - volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm - that a speaker bears in mind. It is those who do bear them in mind who usually win prizes in the dramatic contests; and just as in drama the actors now count for more than the poets, so it is in the contests of public life, owing to the defects of our political institutions. — Aristotle.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Earlier on I said something so lucidly philosophical that my oratory rambled non-stop right into expressing amazement I had just said that. — Beth Myrle Rice

One spring morning timing the lean near-liquid progress of a horse on a track, the dust exploding, the rapid hasping of his hocks, coming up the straight foreshortened and awobble and passing elongate and birdlike wish harsh breaths and slatted brisket heaving and the muscles sliding and brunching in clocklike flexion under the wet black hide and a gout of foam hung from the long jaw and then gone in a muted hoofclatter, the aging magistrate snapped his thumb from the keep of the stopwatch he held and palmed it into his waistcoat pocket and looking at nothing, nor child nor horse, said anent that simple comparison of rotary motions and in the oratory to which he was prone that they had witnessed a thing against which time would not prevail. — Cormac McCarthy

The maxim, as has been already said, is a general statement, and people love to hear stated in general terms what they already believe in some particular connexion: e.g. if a man happens to have bad neighbors or bad children, he will agree with any one who tells him 'Nothing is more annoying than having neighbors,' or, 'Nothing is more foolish than to be the parent of children.' The orator has therefore to guess the subjects on which his hearers really hold views already, and what those views are, and then must express, as general truths, these same views on these same subjects. This is one advantage of using maxims. — Aristotle.

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

Our blessed Savior chose the Garden for his Oratory, and dying, for the place of his Sepulchre; and we do avouch for many weighty causes, that there are none more fit to bury our dead in than in our Gardens and Groves, where our Beds may be decked with verdant and fragrant flowers, Trees and Perennial Plants, the most natural and instructive Hieroglyphics of our expected Resurrection and Immortality. — John Evelyn

Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage. — George Saintsbury

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

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

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 J. Adler

The art of oratory was considered part of the equipment of a statesman. — Barbara W. Tuchman

A speech should not just be a sharing of information, but a sharing of yourself. — Ralph Archbold

ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography. — Ambrose Bierce

Hark to that shrill, sudden shout,
The cry of an applauding multitude,
Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields
The living mass as if he were its soul! — William C. Bryant

There is a something in the very tone of the man who has been with Jesus which has more power to touch the heart than the most perfect oratory: — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader's mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Put your affairs in order, mortals," she boomed, as a gust of wind - yes, wind inside my shop - blew their hair back. "I will feast on your hearts tonight for the offense you gave me. So swears the Morrigan." I thought it was a bit melodramatic, but one does not critique a death goddess on her oratory delivery. — Kevin Hearne

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

The greatest words are written on hearts, not paper. — Matshona Dhliwayo

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

Oratory is the art of making a loud noise sound like a deep thought. — Bennett Cerf

The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator. — Ben Jonson

In my opinion, it was chiefly owing to their deep contemplation in their silent retreats in the days of youth that the old Indian orators acquired the habit of carefully arranging their thoughts.
They listened to the warbling of birds and noted the grandeur and the beauties of the forest. The majestic clouds - which appear like mountains of granite floating in the air - the golden tints of a summer evening sky, and the changes of nature, possessed a mysterious significance.
All of this combined to furnish ample matter for reflection to the contemplating youth. — Francis Assikinack

The sense of war, the extraordinary bravery of the Allied armies, the numbers, the losses, the real suffering that disappears in time and commemorative oratory, are not marked out in any red guidebook of the emotions, but they are present if you look. — John Vinocur

The best protection against propaganda of any sort is the recognition of it for what it is. 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. Propaganda taken in that way is like a drug you do not know you are swallowing. The effect is mysterious; you do not know afterwards why you feel or think the way you do. — Mortimer J. Adler

My dear girl,' I answered in high spirits, for I felt elated at being active again. 'You are about to witness the birth of an immortal literary masterpiece. In a few moments, I shall begin the composition of an eloquent letter. This letter is going to be received by everyone in the Reich who has a Polish name. Or at least that is what shall try to accomplish. We want to remidn everyone of Polish origin that, although they are nominally German, Polish blood continues to flow in their veins.'
Danuta interrupted my oratory.
'Calm down, Witold. Don't excite yourself so. If you raise your voice much louder you shan't have to send any letters. Everybody in the Third Reich will have heard you, including the Gestapo. — Jan Karski

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

That combination, perhaps, deterred me from telling Netanyahu the most difficult truth of all. Simply: that he had much in common with Obama. Both men were left-handed, both believed in the power of oratory and that they were the smartest men in the room. Both were loners, adverse to hasty decision making and susceptible to a strong woman's advice. And both saw themselves in transformative historical roles. Their similarities, perhaps as much as their differences, heightened the chances for friction between the president and Netanyahu, I could have told him. But I did not. Rather, as the prime minister descended the stairs to the tarmac that early May 20 morning, I merely said, "Welcome to Washington, sir," and extended my hand. This he gripped and pulled me toward him. With his eyes still flaring, he recalled the cable I sent him months back predicting the president's speech. "You called it right," he whispered. — Michael B. Oren

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail ... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory. — Charles Horton Cooley

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

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

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

Oratory is good only if it has the qualities of fitness for the occasion, propriety of style, and originality of treatment, while in the case of letters there is no such need whatsoever. — Isocrates