Nelson Mandela Quotes

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

Your ability to communicate is an important tool in your pursuit of your goals, whether it is with your family, your co-workers or your clients and customers.

Deed, not words shall speak me.

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

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

Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic; since both are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to impeach.

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

When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, 'Action, Action, Action.'

There is a truth and beauty in rhetoric; but it oftener serves ill turns than good ones.

In such business Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant More learned than the ears.

Talk is cheap. Words are plentiful. Deeds are precious.

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action.

If I walk into a room of 500 people, my standard is, if I can't give 400 or 450 of you something, a language or a new way of seeing something, then I have failed. If I get 100 of you, I am a failure. I have to get a majority.

Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible.

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

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.

Silence is one of the hardest kind of arguments to refute. There is no good substitute for wisdom; but silence is the best that has yet been discovered.

But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.

Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.

Presentations are the most amazing persuasion tool available in organizations today

The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall.

Prends l'e loquence et tords-lui son cou! Take eloquence and break its neck!

Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.

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

Listen twice as much as you speak.