Aristotle Quotes

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark; when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.

It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.

Permit me also to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity & appropriateness, at the consecration of the cemetery. I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

I am a woman, I am a minority person, and I speak in a very plain way. And I think that reaches people.

And then you've got President Clinton who made the case as only he can. After he spoke, somebody sent out a tweet- they said, you should appoint him secretary of explaining stuff. I like that- secretary of explaining stuff. Although, I have to admit, it didn't really say stuff. I cleaned that up a little bit.

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.

Uncommon things must be said in common words.

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.

It's not enough to be right because he [Rick Perry] is right, you got to be persuasively right, got to be intellectually agile, and I think he can do it.

I mean, look, no matter how you feel about Bush, watching him speak is difficult. It's like- it's like watching a drunk man cross an icy street.

Coolidge made less speeches and got more votes than any man that ever run. (William Jennings) Bryan was listened to and cheered by more people than any single human in politics, and he lost. So there is a doubt just whether talking does you good or harm.

The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.

A preacher who is too big for a little crowd would be too little for a big crowd.

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.

Great men, like nature, use simple language.

What is conceived well is expressed clearly.

You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them... I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can.

I tell this joke about Barack Obama is the best communicator of our generation: The guy reads a teleprompter better than any Hollywood actor. John McCain, his opponent - Stevie Wonder reads a teleprompter better than John McCain.

Great lecturers seldom hesitate to use dramatic tricks to enshrine their precepts in the minds of their audiences, and at Yale perhaps Chauncey B. Tinker was the most noted. To read one of his lectures was like reading a monologue of the great actress Ruth Draper--you missed the main point. You missed the drop in his voice as he approached the death in Rome of the tubercular Keats; you missed the shaking tone in which he described the poet's agony for the absent Fanny with him his love had never been consummated; you missed the grim silence of the end.

…It’s like a spiral: They keep making everything more basic so it will appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make everything even simpler. And it goes on and on.

To me, being funny is more important than making a point, but I don't know. Most politicians are so interested in making points that they don't ... I'd rather be funny myself, and I'd rather listen to somebody with a little sense of humor.

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, others, knew how to lead. They knew how to ask the American people for the right things.