Michael Foot Quotes

My intention to lecture is as vague as my intention is to go on the stage. I will never consider an offer to lecture, not because I despise the vocation, but because I have no desire to appear on the public rostrum.

Trust me, I have never written a speech in my life, and if I have my way, I never will.

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.

What passes out of one's mouth passes into a hundred ears. It is a great misfortune not to have sense enough to speak well.

Lamon, that speech won't scour. It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed.

Man makes up his mind he will preach, and he preaches.

With my natural communication abilities, I could probably gather a crowd even without the Spirit.

In a perfect world, I would never give another speech, address, talk, lecture or whatever as long as I live.

When you make speeches you elicit expectations against which you will be held accountable.

Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

As any speaker will tell you, when you address a large number of people from a stage, you try to make eye contact with people in the audience to communicate that you're accessible and interested in them.

No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.

The aim of the sculptor is to convince us that he is a sculptor; the aim of the orator, is to convince us that he is not an orator.

Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.

We either carry our audience with us, or irritate them.

An orator is a man who says what he thinks and feels what he says.

Regardless of how lyrical or rhetorically gifted they are in conveying big ideas, any candidate can do a good job of giving a speech if the goal of a speech is more than just delivering it well but achieving some end, whether it's convincing people of some issue or persuading them about you as a person.

The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiargift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease.

It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears.

Chauncy Burr ... talks well, possibly better than he thinks. But this is a common failing.

Practice, practice, practice in speaking before an audience will tend to remove all fear of audiences, just as practice in swimming will lead to confidence and facility in the water. You must learn to speak by speaking.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

President Reagan was a master communicator. In this particular speech he did a brilliant job moving between the stately role of U.S. President and a national eulogist. The pain of the event was etched on his face. In 4 short minutes, he addressed five different audiences. He spoke to the collective mourners, families of the fallen, NASA employees, school children, and even took a poke at Russia. He communicated comfort and patriotism within a very short timeframe. That's not easy to do.

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.