Dick Cavett Quotes

The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly.

Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker.

If it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice.

It was my ambition all of my life to be master of the spoken word.

I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker.

We have to teach girls communication skills.

I've never been a talker. I've never been a good salesman when it comes to selling fights.

And I love to speak - I am very good at it. And if you love to do something, you're very good at it, and also you are paid well, why would you not do it? Why would you stop?

Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.

I'm not the greatest communicator. I kind of internalize a lot. See, I just said I need to be quiet, but that's not the kind of communication I mean. I mean expressing myself or even standing up for myself. I can sometimes be very passive.

The peers just fill the air with their speeches.""And from what I've seen, vice versa.

There are two kinds of speeches: the Mother Hubbard speech, which, like the garment, covers everything but touches nothing, and the French bathing suit speech, which covers only the essential points.

An orator is a good man who is skilled in speaking.

Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to.

In his head, his mother said, 'People shout when they don’t have the vocabulary to whisper'.

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice.

An accomplished mathematician, i.e. a most wretched orator.

The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart.

Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.

The speeches to be wary of are those that begin with I'm just going to say a few words.