Anthony McCarten Quotes

I love English. I learned it from the speeches of Winston Churchill.

Churchill has spent the best years of his life preparing impromptu remarks.

Political speeches are a particularly low form of rhetoric.

Since my student days, I'd been a fan of those books with titles like 'Great Speeches that Changed the World,' as I loved the idea that the right person with the right words at the right time could really make a difference.

Churchill wrote his own speeches. When a leader does that, he becomes emotionally invested with his utterances...If Churchill had had a speech write in 1940, Britain would be speaking German today.

It's a good thing Winston Churchill was around before the shallow age of television. He might never have become one of the greatest leaders of all time.

Regan’s greatness as a rhetorician was in his delivery not in the content of what he said as with Churchill and Roosevelt.

The best way to study about speech writing is to read great speeches.

If you look at the copies of Churchill's speeches that have survived, they are heavily marked up. He was scrupulous about the impact of each word. He preferred short words and the repetition of short words. He knew everything about the techniques of rhetoric.

it wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short.

What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

Speeches are more important in politics than talking points, as a rule, and are better remembered.

Over the centuries, Chinese bureaucrats perfected the dark arts of emptiness to such an extent that when they deliver speeches these days, they often recite verbatim speeches that they have previously delivered, with the sparest of adjustments.

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.

Now, forty years after his passing, Winston Churchill is still quoted, read, revered, and referred to as much, if not more, than when he was alive.

Modern political speechwriting is not a high-minded pursuit for brilliant talents.

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

I used to recite my speeches walking up a hill. It gives you wind power. I could throw fifty-six pound words across the Grand Canyon.

One of your jobs as a speechwriter is to transform the bureaucratic into the poetic.

I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts.

Mayors make tough decisions; Senators make tough speeches.

Churchill would spend as many hours practicing as there were minutes in the speech.

Kennedy had a much better speech writer than I do.

Parliament will train your men to the manners required of a statesman; but in a much less degree to the intrinsic functions of one. To these latter, it is capable of mistraining as nothing else can. Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk. To tell a good story for yourself, and to make it appear that you have done your work

The genius of guys like Lincoln and Reagan and FDR - the great communicator leaders - is that they're actually educators, so they understand when they use a phrase that they have to explain it, because, by definition, you won't understand it or they wouldn't need to be using it.