Mark Twain Quotes

In oratory the will must predominate.

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.

Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable …

The first, that their pretensions to this possession of an art properly so called in their art of speaking are entirely unfounded; and the second, that they are involved in a profound mistake in their confusion of the good with the pleasant.

Some eloquence is like a magic.

I could sway people with words—words that welled up within me.

Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

Nobody has a magic lamp which can tell you in advance whether what you say will be effective in persuading an audience.

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

Because an appeal makes logical sense is no guarantee that it will work.

Now I see that going out into the testing ground of men it is the tongue and not the deed that wins the day.

I wish I could talk like Donald Trump or Steve Wynn. Hell, I'd love it.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust, not in the right argument, but in the right word.

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker.

Eloquence may set fire to reason.

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

Use your logick, and then your rhetorick. Rhetorick without logick, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet I confess more are taken with rhetorick than logick, because they are catched with a free expression, when they understand not reason. Logick must be natural, or it is worth nothing at all: Your rhetorick figures may be learned.

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

As reason is the glory of man, so the lamp of reason is eloquence.

The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what your saying, and they can't know what you've saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting until you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.

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

As a Shakespeare character, if you can persuade someone in a sentence or a speech, you've got it right.

I consider myself to be quite persuasive when I want.