Barack Obama Quotes

Few orators have known how to achieve such admirable results by dint of repetition. Besides, Lenin always felt his audience. He never rose too high above its level, nor did he ever omit to descend to it at just the necessary moment, in order not to break the continuity of the hypnosis which dominated the will of his flock; and more than any one he realized that a mob is like a horse that wants to be firmly bestrode and spurred, that wants to feel the hand of a master.

The way you communicate an idea is different than the way you communicate a product.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

Learn the art of the pitch and of messaging.

People pay attention to what a President says, whether or not he pauses for emphasis in the right places. Sometimes they even read the text.

The bully pulpit is not an open microphone. You have to target it very carefully.

A campaign appearance is judged much like that of an actor. Is the performance persuasive? Not what is said, and I find that too bad.

I would rather speak to 500 men that would give me their attention that to 100,000 that would not.

Trump has a way of driving a message so people hear it.

The problem with some truth-tellers is that they don't do it in a way that makes people want to listen.

In a world where audiences listen for attitudes rather than arguments or information, speakers must feel the pressure to posture rather than engage.

I do think of my reader, or listener, really, more often, if I give a lecture, for example, and I know that I'm talking to these people; I enjoy sort of preening them a bit. But it's a matter of decorum, basically.

There is only one excuse for a speaker's asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.

The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.

If you don't have story to tell the public at large - you have to be able to sort of go listen.

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.

Feeding the media is like training a dog. You can't throw an entire steak at a dog to train it to sit. You have to give it little bits of steak over and over again until it learns.

I thoroughly believe that any man who's got anything worthwhile to say will be heard if he only says it often enough.

Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired.

When you deejay a party, a good DJ's job is to take care of the crowd. If people want to hear Britney Spears, that's what you're supposed to do.

I [give] maybe the long-winded speeches that not everybody reads, but I can also do a slow jam on Jimmy Fallon better than most.

You don't have to be a preacher to talk about what matters, and you don't have to drop the pleasures of style

Being on TV in front of people is a lot different than sitting in a dark room with a microphone. When I had my radio show, I was on four hours a day for 20-something years. If you put a live microphone in front of Mother Teresa for that amount of time, she'd piss somebody off.

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.

There is a point you can definitely lose the audience and sometimes you don't know where it is.