Flannery O'Connor Quotes

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.

So many people are accustomed to written information that you really have to have a few more bells and whistles in this day and age.

The way you communicate an idea is different than the way you communicate a product.

You have to be aware of who you're talking to in an audience.

Learn the art of the pitch and of messaging.

You want to be understood by the sophisticated few but you also have to be more loud somehow, otherwise your message doesn't go through.

A campaign appearance is judged much like that of an actor. Is the performance persuasive? Not what is said, and I find that too bad.

My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.

For us, creativity means thinking about the lives of our audience and how to connect with them.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

Yes, good presentation is a vehicle for enhancing people and policies. But if the presentation fails, we have to look beyond the wrapping and see what is actually contained in the package, to see the substance of it.

I'm not the guy who will sit in a room with somebody who's using a bunch of big words and just act like I know what they're talking about, or sit on set with somebody and they'll be trying to explain something and not using layman's terms and I'll just say, "Hey, excuse me, what do you mean by that? Explain to me so I just understand."

If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.

Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.

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.

If you don't pick your audience, you're lost because you're not really talking to anybody.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn't mean you've reached them.

I don't care about preaching to the converted.

Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

You try to make every word count, so there's no doubt what you're talking about. When you're young, you waffle away. Well, I'm done with that. I think it's much more interesting to say just what you mean.

No matter what Hitler said, he spoke with a fine feeling for the particular circle which he addressed. ... He was a great psychologist.

Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.

It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learns how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.