Nikki Giovanni Quotes

Using rhetorical questions in speeches is a great way to keep the audience involved. Don't you think those kinds of questions would keep your attention?

When a man is asked to make a speech, the first thing he has to decide is what to say.

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

Always, with speeches, I feel like it's an opportunity to say something.

Making clever speeches takes a lot of work and a lot of time.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

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

You have to be able to enthral and persuade at the same time.

Hey, I'm not a politician. I'm a ham. I love to give speeches.

Boyle's Law: As pressure on a candidate increases, the volume at which he speaks also increases.

Mr. Chairman, I desire to say to those present that their perfect attention will not embarrass me in the least.

Long speeches work if they’re filled with substance.

Everyone wants a whack at the speech.

A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience. Modern society is too vast and too restless to give a conversationalist a fair chance.

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

When I give a speech, I tell it like a story.

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

Never make a speech at a country dance or a football game.

Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.

we have not been impressed with any attribute of the Senate other than its appearance and manners. We have heard the best speakers: they all fire off speeches which deal with the entire subject in general terms and which do not attempt to debate, to answer opponents' arguments or offer new points for discussion. And the speeches are constantly degenerating into empty rhetoric; they abound in quotations from well-known authors or from their own former speeches.

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

I'm liking the idea more and more of just standing up with a microphone and talking.

I think nobody wants to hear a sermon. Well, some people do, but maybe not through music or not with me. No one wants to hear me give a speech that way.

When you give a speech you don't go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important.

Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.