Anthony McCarten Quotes

At some point early on, I realized that three of the greatest speeches ever delivered were by Winston Churchill, and they were written and delivered within a four-week period of each other.

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!

No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.

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

I like that kind of stuff. I like doing speeches. I've been lucky because I've had a lot of characters, over the years, who will have three or four page speeches.

There is nothing like oratory, it is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king.

To be sure, Kennedy did not discount the importance of words in rallying the nation to meet its foreign and domestic challenges. Winston Churchill's powerful exhortations during World War II set a standard he had long admired. Kennedy was hardly unmindful of how important a great inaugural address could be.

When I give a lot of speeches, they're always on the fly. I mean, I know what I'm going to say roughly, but I do not - will not read.

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

I love English. I learned it from the speeches of Winston Churchill.

Speeches are much easier if you read them. I just find when I do that, it's harder to fire up the crowd.

I used to recite my speeches walking up a hill. It gives you wind power. I could throw fifty-six pound words across the Grand Canyon.

Long speeches work if they’re filled with substance.

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

Churchill would spend as many hours practicing as there were minutes in the speech.

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

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

If all our agents would abridge their speeches one half, I am satisfied the effect produced would be much greater. The 'art of leaving off' at the right time, and in the right place, is one of the most difficult things to learn.

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

Nobody wants to hear long speeches.

As all Members of Parliament know, the ease and flow of making a speech outside the House is not at all the same as that required in the Chamber.

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

There is no power like oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears, Cicero by . . . swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished; that of the other continues to this day.

Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech.

My strong point is not rhetoric , it isn't showmanship, it isn't big promises - those things that create the glamour and the excitement that people call charisma and warmth.