David J. Brewer Quotes

Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master.

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

Mr. Lincoln is one of Nature’s orators, using his rare powers solely and effectively to elucidate and to convince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and electrify as well.

Henry Clay's eloquence did not consist, as many fine specimens of eloquence do, of types and figures, of antitheses and elegant arrangements of words and sentences, but rather of that deeply earnest and impassioned tone and manner which can proceed only through conviction in the speaker of the justice and importance of his cause. This it is that truly touches the chords of sympathy; and those who heard Mr. Clay never failed to be moved by it, or ever after forgot the impression. All his [oratorical] efforts were made for practical effect. He never spoke merely to be heard.

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

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

I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if Europe has furnished more eminent, to produce a single passage superior to the speech of Logan

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.

An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.

Look, I debate for a living so I don't need to learn any lessons from amateurs.

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

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.

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.

I often begin a thought with spirit and finish it with nonsense. The chain of my argument often escapes me, and when lost can seldom be retrieved. These faults are so overpowering that I should sink into perpetual silence were it not that sometimes in ardor of debate, when my feelings are wound up to a high tone, elocution pours itself along with unusual rapidity, and I have passages which would not shame a good speaker; this is the only thing that makes me tolerable to others or to myself.

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

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

William Jennings Bryan is a much better orator than I am. I have to think.

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.

It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and other arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech.

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

An orator is a man who says what he thinks and feels what he says.

There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison.