Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

William Jennings Bryan is a much better orator than I am. I have to think.

I don't have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

The more I read about the rules the great orators used, the more I realised, of course, this is how you stir people's hearts, and you persuade and cajole and move people out of fixed positions. The techniques are quite menacingly easy.

Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.

A man who is furnished with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

In oratory the will must predominate.

An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.

I'm not terribly fond of soapboxes.

Look, I debate for a living so I don't need to learn any lessons from amateurs.

It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.

If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times.

Who does not delight in oratory? How we gather to hear even an ordinary speaker! How often is a jury swayed and controlled by the appeals of counsel!

It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.

The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.

People have said I can come off a little trial-lawyerish. I tell people I never actually became a lawyer, but I play one at City Hall.

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.

I made lots of talks and challenged lots of people.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master.

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

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.

Every man in it is a great man—an orator, a critic, a statesman, and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his criticism, and his political abilities. The consequence is that business is drawn and spun out to immeasurable length.