Fred Thompson Quotes

Why would you get up there and bore people? I never have figured that out. These people are supposedly in the entertainment industry, and they finally get up there to that podium and they become the most boring people in the world.

When you show up to speak publically, you have to show up to give. You always know the ones who do and the ones who don't.

The job is the same - to attempt to make it sound like you've never said it before and as if it's just occurred to you. And that's the same whether you're on camera or whether you're on stage in a room full of people.

I think nobody wants to hear a sermon. Well, some people do, but maybe not through music or not with me. No one wants to hear me give a speech that way.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

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

Some people rehearse to a point where they're robotic, and they sound like they have memorized their presentation and didn't take it to the next level. Going from sounding memorized and canned to sounding natural is a lot of work.

Most speakers speak ten minutes too long.

Trust me, I have never written a speech in my life, and if I have my way, I never will.

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

In order to make a good speech you must have something to say and you have to believe it.

You can have a five-page speech, and if the camera's not looking at you, you're not there.

It's essential that you make eye contact with your audience. You've got to know what's happening out there.

If for the sake of a crowded audience you do wish to hold a lecture, your ambition is no laudable one, and at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry.

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes.

I wonder what my speech would be.

I've discovered I prefer to prepare a few notes or actually write the speech so I can really hone it down to hopefully be entertaining, try and get a laugh at least by the second line, and then say what you need to say.

All "bad" presentations struggle to keep the audience interested. The audience squirms wishing they could escape. The audience has given the presenter an hour of their life, so they want that hour to be useful. It's disrespectful of a presenter to not show up rehearsed and prepared with information and insights that will improve the lives of the audience in some way. Presenting will do only one of two things for you: it will either diminish your credibility or yield results. Most bad presentations hurt the presenter's credibility.

People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.

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.

When I'm speaking in front of 15 and 20,000 people and I'm up there using a lot of motion, I guess in it's own way, it's a pretty healthy act. I really enjoy doing it. A lot of times these rooms are very hot, like saunas, and I guess that is a form of exercise and, you know?

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

Giving his lecture for the third time freed Dr. Lionel Gift from paying much attention to it. He had a naturally expressive style of delivery, hones over the years in elementary-econ lecture halls. He knew, without even thinking, to address the middle rows of the hall, but to occasionally "shoot" the listeners in the back corners. He knew how to make eye contact and solicit the attention of those who were thinking of other things.

So, of course, Gish's presentation was well received, which it would have been the case had he only gotten up and said "praise the Lord" and sat back down.

People who know how to act are never preachers.