Tan Cheng Bock Quotes

Modern political speechwriting is not a high-minded pursuit for brilliant talents.

I think the Reagan people are superb marketers. Their whole approach to polling, to television, to the symbolism and the rest approaches genius.

There is no such thing as a nonpolitical speech by a politician.

Politics is gut; commercials are gut.

In politics, a picture is worth a thousand words.

What is politics but persuading the public to vote for this and support that and endure these for the promises of those.

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

Politics is power, and communications is power,

They [Democrats] are the troubadours and the crooners of catastrophe.

The challenge in working in politics, particularly if you're working for a political party, is that everyone's a messenger.

Modern political speechwriting is certainly a skill, and one that requires experience and practice to master.

In another life, before taking the veil of journalistic purity, I practiced the black arts of a political operative, including 'debate prep.'

All politicians are to some extent salesmen.

I talked to the rest of the nation for about ten minutes about what Lyndon Johnson was doing for the people of the Northeast. In truth, I thought I was laying it on a bit thickly. But when I returned and spoke with the President, he mentioned several points I could have added. I learned that it was simply not possible to lay it on too thickly for him (or most other politicians).

It is very difficult to deliver nuance in a campaign. Campaigns are about contrasts.

No politician has ever been defeated by a speech he didn’t give.

People [in politics] do go on and talk.

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.

Kennedy understood something that is not so obvious, and that is that words are more important than deeds. You can’t govern 300 million people—or 180 million when Kennedy was president—by doing things. You can only do it by rhetoric.

Political speeches are a particularly low form of rhetoric.

Those who tell us to be in touch with our own desires are often merely trying to make us believe that what we want is the thing that they are selling. […] We're used to that kind of persuasion, for political candidates as well as commercial products.

Obama has proved to be particularly adept at using the media to disseminate his administration's messages, but he is a masterful orator. Bill Clinton, too.

Political speeches might represent the ideas of the politician at hand, but often times, it's not written in their own words.

The point of Left-wing propaganda is to make us feel powerless.

Politics and acting are very closely tied. The job is to convince.