Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.

My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.

In order to make a good speech you must have something to say and you have to believe it.

False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis.

Long speeches work if they’re filled with substance.

The truth is always the strongest argument.

I have found that there are moments when someone uses language that sears itself into the head [of the listener]. Those are the moments I look for.

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

Be sincere, be brief, be seated.

… the thug is aware that loudness convinces 60 persons where reasoning convinces but one..

I want people to hear what I have to say, and I want to be able to get a lot of points across.

Whatever we well understand we express clearly, and words flow with ease.

Great communicators leave their audiences with great clarity.

The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.

With words we govern men.

You cannot possibly persuade people that what they have firmly in mind is not so.

I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which was to decide the question. They laid their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves.

Illuminate choice.

Henry Clay's eloquence did not consist, as many fine specimens of eloquence do, of types and figures, of antitheses and elegant arrangements of words and sentences, but rather of that deeply earnest and impassioned tone and manner which can proceed only through conviction in the speaker of the justice and importance of his cause. This it is that truly touches the chords of sympathy; and those who heard Mr. Clay never failed to be moved by it, or ever after forgot the impression. All his [oratorical] efforts were made for practical effect. He never spoke merely to be heard.

Part of politics is redundancy. You’ve got to say the same thing over and over even if you get tired of it…not everyone has heard it.

Part of politics is redundancy. You just have to repeat things sometimes because not everyone has heard your message.

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

Less is almost always better than more. Short words, short sentences, short speeches.

The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what your saying, and they can't know what you've saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting until you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.

Churchill has spent the best years of his life preparing impromptu remarks.