Thomas Starr King Quotes

Obama's gift for delivering set-piece oratorical tours de force had special resonance to Americans fed up with a president who could hardly string two words together without a collision of syntax and whose idea of clever was the single entendre.

Unlike his father, Churchill was not a natural speaker.

Give Obama a script he has made his own, and he is the motivational speaker to end all speakers. Tony Robbins cloned with Honest Abe.

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

… a style of oratory that I never heard equaled in this or any other country

... the gustiest and gloriest, loudest and lustiest, the deadliest and damndest orator ever heard on this or any other earth ..., the champion boob-bumper of all epoches.

He is the most brilliant speaker of the English tongue of all men on this globe

Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator.

Eloquence wins its great and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our opponents as from those of our friends.

What the people call eloquence is the facility some persons have of speaking alone and for a long time, aided by extravagant gestures, a loud voice, and powerful lungs.

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

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

I'm an orator, a raconteur.

It was an argument of rare power and eloquence.

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

Mr. Lincoln is one of Nature’s orators, using his rare powers solely and effectively to elucidate and to convince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and electrify as well.

It is much better when a member resumes his seat after he has made a speech for the House to have the feeling that they wish he had gone on longer instead of wondering why he did not stop sooner.

The gifts of nature are necessary; but they are not sufficient to make a complete orator without art and study.

In those days it was very nice to have a President who clearly spoke the English language.

Kennedy had a much better speech writer than I do.

Unlike the current occupant of the White House [George W. Bush], he has no difficulty in orally extemporizing a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.

If all our agents would abridge their speeches one half, I am satisfied the effect produced would be much greater. The 'art of leaving off' at the right time, and in the right place, is one of the most difficult things to learn.

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

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.

The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.