Johann Georg Hamann Quotes

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

In oratory the will must predominate.

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.

Talking and eloquence are not the same.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if Europe has furnished more eminent, to produce a single passage superior to the speech of Logan

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

I'm not good at throwing around rhetoric.

The design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth, to Reduce the Passions to the Government of Reasons; to place our Subject in a Right Light, and excite our Hearers to a due consideration of it.

A great speech is literature.

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

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

Some eloquence is like a magic.

I often begin a thought with spirit and finish it with nonsense. The chain of my argument often escapes me, and when lost can seldom be retrieved. These faults are so overpowering that I should sink into perpetual silence were it not that sometimes in ardor of debate, when my feelings are wound up to a high tone, elocution pours itself along with unusual rapidity, and I have passages which would not shame a good speaker; this is the only thing that makes me tolerable to others or to myself.

It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and other arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech.

There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

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

Nobody wants to hear long speeches.

The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction.

The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall.

When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, 'Action, Action, Action.'

The greatest and truest models for all oratorsis Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators.

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory !!

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action.