Quotes About Speeches

I'm grateful for the likes of Kundera, Murnane, Markson, Berger, and, in his recent work, Coetzee. But no matter how celebrated they are, critics still consider them askance. Elizabeth Costello, for example, is a great novel, but it got quite a critical panning when it was published. The complaint was that it was simply a book of speeches, without the machinery of conventional fiction. Markson's books are compilations of facts and alleged facts, very artfully.

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.

You know what I miss? The energy of live audiences, because there's no substitute for that exchange that you get in real time when you're sharing a moment, a same with people who are in that same time and space with you. I really just love that. I enjoy it when I get to travel and make speeches now. I like that a lot too. But that's probably the thing that I miss the most about hosting my own show.

…always felt the pain of her friends so keenly that she could not speak easy, fluent words of comforting. Besides, she remembered how well-meant speeches had hurt her in her own sorrow and was afraid.

When I was 6 I became the poster child for my hospital and would go to banquets and make speeches. I did not get stage fright and I actually enjoyed talking to people of all ages.

Like many of my friends and colleagues, I can't get enough of Obama news; latest polling, speeches, visits, reaction of world leaders.

Speeches made to the people are essential to the arousing of enthusiasm for a war.

Let eloquence be flung to the dogs rather than souls be lost. What we want is to win souls. They are not won by flowery speeches.

Bring different groups together internally, send them out to visit other companies, or bring in interesting speeches. Show that you love learning by having people on staff whose job it is to explore without any near-term metrics. Publicly shut a project down and talk about what a great job a team did because they learned so much. And so on.

I think my speeches are hilarious. I think I'm a natural comedian, but I like denying people the chance to laugh. I want to deny you the relief of the punchline.

Speeches by businessmen on social responsibility...may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the pursuit of profits is wicked.... There is one and only one social responsibility of business-to...engage in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

Political leaders normally act by making convincing speeches.

Banquet: a plate of cold, hairy chicken and artificially coloured green peas completely surrounded by dreary speeches and appeals for donations.

I was able to adjust initially by plunging right into the book and the Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University. And it turns out that there is a good way to make a living by giving speeches.

A great many political speeches are literary parricides; they kill their fathers.

Indeed, one modern President abjured God altogether, ending speeches with a chaste 'Thank you very much.' This was Jimmy Carter, the most genuinely devout President of the postwar period.

It would be desirable if every Government, when it comes to power, should have its old speeches burnt.

Hillary Clinton is trying an entirely different approach with Iowa than the one she tried eight years ago when she lost there. She will not start speeches by saying, 'Hello, Iowa, or Idaho, or whichever one you are.'

I am the most travelled of all my contemporaries; I have extended my field of enquiry wider than anybody else, I have seen more countries and climes, and have heard more speeches of learned men. No one has surpassed me in the composition of lines, according to demonstration, not even the Egyptian knotters of ropes, or geometers.

They said I ignored the drug problem. Well, I gave speeches on drugs, I wrote books on drugs. I did darn near everything on drugs!

[Pope Francis] has done this not through angry speeches, but through the powerful symbols and examples of embracing a badly deformed man, welcoming refugees to the Vatican, strolling through a shanty town in Rome, visiting a home for the elderly, washing the feet of prisoners on Holy Thursday, and going to a hospital for newborns.

I really believe that God builds all the bridges, writes all the books, and delivers all the speeches. When I say God, again, I mean that source we all come from, we all are pieces of, and we all are connected to.

I forgot Dumbledore trashed Hogwarts, refused to resign and ran off to the forest to make speeches to angry trolls.

I know they are all environmentalists. I heard a lot of my speeches recycled.

When faced with the inevitable fatigue that comes with the recycling of speeches and the recycling of thoughts in a rather small stream of vortex, I am urged to not be ashamed of recycling.

Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in them; because I was a militant suffragette and seized a chance of beating time to The March of the Women from the window of my cell in Holloway Prison with a tooth-brush; because I have written books, spoken speeches, broadcast, and don't always make sure that my hat is on straight; for these and other equally pertinent reasons, in a certain sense I am well known.

I don't like giving speeches - I enjoy sitting on my rump.

There is an interesting resemblance in the speeches of dictators, no matter what country they may hail from or what language they may speak.

Giving back, doing motivational speeches and stuff like that, that's always made me feel good. If you repeatedly go out there, and you are the change that you want to see, then that's what you are.

Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

I'm not sure that the American people are looking for a lot of speeches. I think what they're looking for is action. But one of the things that I do think is important is to be able to explain to the American people what you're doing, and why you're doing it. That is something that I think every great president has been able to do. From FDR to Lincoln to John Kennedy to Eisenhower.

I don't like jokes in speeches. I do like wit and humor. A joke is to humor what pornography is to erotic language in a good novel.

No, and in fact I get a bit frustrated, because I'm actually quite good at one-liners, and I've had hundreds of them over the years, and they sink without trace, and I get very frustrated. Every party conference I really work on the speeches, and I always have two or three things I'm quite proud of, and no one ever remembers them.

Don't have conversations taking place in empty space. Weave in background details of where the action (dialogue is a form of "action") is taking place. Don't have invisible people talking, either. Let the reader see them as they speak - their facial expressions and gestures. And by all means "cue" the speeches to the speakers.

People have a right to give a speech. And people have a right to protest. But I'm not a great fan of disrupting people's speeches.

Bopha, Sandy, floods in Pakistan, droughts in China… How many reports from the likes of the World Bank, NASA and the International Energy Agency will it take? How many preventable catastrophes until our leaders realize that climate change will not be solved by nice speeches and empty promises? Countries like Canada and the U.S. have promised to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution and provide adequate financial support for developing countries, they have so far failed on both counts.

Hillary Clinton has gotten rich, and she's made a lot of speeches, and she's get great book deals and so forth. But they don't love her like they loved Bill [Clinton], and they don't love her like they loved Barack [Obama], and they don't love her like they love Michelle [Obama]. The love they have for her is related to the fact that right next to her name is a big capital D on the ballot.

During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.

I fell asleep at my desk many times. This was when working on events—virtually every one I’ve done in the last 5 years. I was not confronting the writing of speeches. In fact, I was not wanting to confront what I was doing at the time—being irresponsible... I am now known for falling asleep. This has happened 50 times in the last 5 years and probably 20 times at my desk in the last 2 years.