Quotes & Sayings About Presidential Speech

People are already talking about the next presidential election. There's stories all over about who might run. At a recent speech, a prominent Democrat said that Hillary Clinton should not run because she can't win. Immediately after the speech, Hillary told her husband to shut up. — Conan O'Brien

As someone who is in awe and grateful every day to be in a country where freedom of the press, free speech and free elections are a way of life, I am wowed, amazed and excited by the opportunity to moderate a 2012 presidential debate. — Candy Crowley

Acceptance speeches can make or break presidential candidacies. It was Al Gore's 2000 acceptance speech that relaunched his candidacy and nearly saved him. John Kerry's speech and overall ineffective convention nearly sank him in 2004 (though he was almost saved by the debates). — Chuck Todd

A presidential speech is always the work of many hands. — David Frum

There comes a day of public ceremonial, and a chance to make a speech ... A million voters with IQs below 60 have their ears glued to the radio. It takes four days' hard work to concoct a speech without a sensible word in it. Next a dam must be opened somewhere. Four dry Senators get drunk and make a painful scene. The Presidential automobile runs over a dog. It rains. — H.L. Mencken

The specific use of folks as an exclusionary and inclusionary signal, designed to make the speaker sound like one of the boys or girls, is symptomatic of a debasement of public speech inseparable from a more general erosion of American cultural standards. Casual, colloquial language also conveys an implicit denial of the seriousness of whatever issue is being debated: talking about folks going off to war is the equivalent of describing rape victims as girls (unless the victims are, in fact, little girls and not grown women). Look up any important presidential speech in the history of the United States before 1980, and you will find not one patronizing appeal to folks. Imagine: 'We here highly resolve that these folks shall not have died in vain; and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth. — Susan Jacoby

Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production. — Herbert Hoover

For Mitt Romney, the complex question of anti-Mormon bias boils down to the practical matter of how he can make it go away. Facing a traditional American anti-Catholicism, John F. Kennedy gave a speech during the 1960 presidential campaign declaring his private religion irrelevant to his qualifications for public office. — Noah Feldman

The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth. — Herbert Hoover

I met Jon Lovett, who was just coming off of three years of being a presidential speech writer and had just arrived here to be a comedy writer in Hollywood. I thought he was super green, in terms of this world, but he knows so much about the world that we're attempting to write about. — Josh Gad

Ted Sorrenson, JFK's presidential speech writer, when asked how it came about that he wrote the "ask not what you can do ... " speech, he would answer 'ask not.' — Peggy Noonan

Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

President Bush was once asked which Presidential speech he admired most. He replied that it was the one Teddy Roosevelt had in his pocket that had helped cushion the blow of a would-be assassin's bullet. — Maureen Dowd

On the other side, I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented, is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech. — Ed Gillespie

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.
It is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend — Barack Obama

During a recent event at a restaurant called Tommy's Country Ham House in South Carolina, presidential candidate Ben Carson delivered a speech right after he lost his front tooth. Which still left him with more teeth than everyone combined at Tommy's Country Ham House. — Jimmy Fallon