Margaret Chase Smith Quotes

No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject.

Do not put cleverness in front of the communication.

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

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

If you make yourself understood, you're always speaking well.

Making noise is easy; making stuff people understand is an easy thing to do.

We should speak as the populace, think as the learned.

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

Clarity of communication is important.

I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.

No one ever complains about a speech being too short!

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

Communication is about being effective, not always about being proper.

If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.

It's no use of talking unless people understand what you say.

My purpose in public address and in speech is really encapsulated in three C's: clear, concise, correct. No overblowing rhetoric or anything like that. As simple as possible: clear, concise, correct.

I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.

Make your point as clear as possible and thrust the steel well home.

Speak to men according to their mental capacities, for if you speak all things to all men, some cannot understand you and so fall into errors.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me understand something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

It is much better when a member resumes his seat after he has made a speech for the House to have the feeling that they wish he had gone on longer instead of wondering why he did not stop sooner.

You must be loud but you must also be understandable. There’s no point in being loud if you can’t be understood.