John Lewis Quotes

Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road.

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.

In oratory the will must predominate.

Some politicians that I've seen have been brilliant with the public. They almost speak with the skill of an actor.

Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a preacher as well, 'cause I can really get into an audience.

Talking and eloquence are not the same.

Long speeches work if they’re filled with substance.

Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.

I was asked to address a congressional caucus and told to keep it brief as congressmen have such short attention spans.

The gifts of nature are necessary; but they are not sufficient to make a complete orator without art and study.

Mr. James Madison is a character who has long been in public life; and what is very remarkable every Person seems to acknowledge his greatness. He blends together the profound politician, with the Scholar. In the management of every great question he evidently took the lead in the Convention, and tho' he cannot be called an Orator, he is a most agreeable, eloquent, and convincing Speaker. From a spirit of industry and application which he possesses in a most eminent degree, he always comes forward the best informed Man of any point in debate. The affairs of the United States, he perhaps, has the most correct knowledge of, of any Man in the Union.

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

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

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

Few orators have known how to achieve such admirable results by dint of repetition. Besides, Lenin always felt his audience. He never rose too high above its level, nor did he ever omit to descend to it at just the necessary moment, in order not to break the continuity of the hypnosis which dominated the will of his flock; and more than any one he realized that a mob is like a horse that wants to be firmly bestrode and spurred, that wants to feel the hand of a master.

I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit.

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

Nobody wants to hear long speeches.

My dad wasn't the best speaker like a Bill Clinton, or a Henry Kissinger, but he had character.

When I talk, people listen.

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker.

There are but few talents requisite to become a popular preacher; for the people are easily pleased if they perceive any endeavors in the orator to please them. The meanest qualifications will work this effect if the preacher sincerely sets about it.

I would not have preachers torment their hearers, and detain them with long and tedious preaching.

I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken that by the written word, and that every great movement on this globe owes its rise to the great speakers and not to the great writers.