John C. Maxwell Quotes

With the coming of radio as a mass medium, suddenly the world changed. It became about, 'Can this leader project emotional connection through the way he speaks on the radio?' And the anxiety about whether he could do that, we've inherited.

Giving a true speech, a true, passionate speech, is old-school football.

I loved the idea of touching base with an audience.

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker.

I thoroughly believe that any man who's got anything worthwhile to say will be heard if he only says it often enough.

You don't have to be a preacher to talk about what matters, and you don't have to drop the pleasures of style

There is only one excuse for a speaker's asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.

Talkers have always ruled. They will continue to rule. The smart thing is to join them.

An effective speaker knows that the success or failure of his talk is not for him to decide - it will be decided in the minds and hearts of his hearers.

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

Nobody wants to hear long speeches.

I can see that when I talk, guys listen.

When you're on TV, you're still coaching, believe it or not. You're just coaching America, you're not coaching one team.

Leadership requires the ability to engage and to create empathy for communities with disparate needs and ideas. Telling an effective story - especially in romantic suspense - demands a similar skill set.

As a presenter, you have to speak with artificial energy and enthusiasm.

A speaker who does not strike oil in ten minutes should stop boring.

Barack Obama's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences.

Great communication depends on two simple skills-context, which attunes a leader to the same frequency as his or her audience, and delivery, which allows a leader to phrase messages in a language the audience can understand.

Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn't enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate's trade.

The most important thing to remember is you must know your audience.

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

I can usually get the right connection with the crowd and I don't have to be jumping off ladders.

The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.

The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take common sense quantum sufficit; add a little application to the rules and orders of the House [of Commons], throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.