Theodore C. Sorensen Quotes

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.

I [Moses] am not a man of words.

The capacity to persuade is an essential part of being a great leader.

Kennedy understood something that is not so obvious, and that is that words are more important than deeds. You can’t govern 300 million people—or 180 million when Kennedy was president—by doing things. You can only do it by rhetoric.

Unlike his father, Churchill was not a natural speaker.

He was one of the few political leaders I have ever met whose public speeches revealed more than his private conversations. [On Ronald Reagan]

Speech is the best show a man puts on.

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

Actually, my correspondent's language is better than mine. He can put his sentiment into words.

The man who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he really possesses.

Politicians are good listeners. Because if they're not, they aren't politicians for very long.

My father would have been impressed by Barack Obama's mind and style and grace of manner, as well as by - I'm certain - his abilities as a writer.

He is a third rate Western lawyer…they take a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar and whose speeches are illiterate compositions…interlarded with coarse and clumsy jokes.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail completely in the House of Lords.

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

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.

Debates measure abilities you don't need to govern, like glibness. To govern you should be thoughtful, not glib. A debater has a sense of humor, but what's it got to do with governing? The ability to think on your feet. You make a budget sitting on your tush.

I was always drawn to standing up in front of people.

Some directors have the gift of the gab, but I don't.

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

that your power of command with simple language was one of the magnificent things of our century. (from the poem: result)

Clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.

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

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.