Theodore C. Sorensen Quotes

Long speeches work if they’re filled with substance.

The best way to study about speech writing is to read great speeches.

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

It is much better when a member resumes his seat after he has made a speech for the House to have the feeling that they wish he had gone on longer instead of wondering why he did not stop sooner.

In oratory the will must predominate.

Political speeches are a particularly low form of rhetoric.

Of means of persuading by speaking there are three species: some consist in the character of the speaker; others in the disposing the hearer a certain way; others in the thing itself which is said, by reason of its proving, or appearing to prove the point.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

When a man is asked to make a speech, the first thing he has to decide is what to say.

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing.

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

The nature of politics is to subtract meaning from language.

Using vague, slippery or just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it's not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you're saying something instead of nothing.

People pay attention to what a President says, whether or not he pauses for emphasis in the right places. Sometimes they even read the text.

Regan’s greatness as a rhetorician was in his delivery not in the content of what he said as with Churchill and Roosevelt.

To make a politic speech is like being carried up a flight of steps by the pressure of a crowd.

I would rather speak to 500 men that would give me their attention that to 100,000 that would not.

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

Use declarative sentences… Use an elevated tone… Use graceful language

Many people can contribute suggestions to a speech, but only one person can write it.

Choose each word as a precision tool. Consider how it sounds, not how it reads.

Less is almost always better than more. Short words, short sentences, short speeches.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.