William McKinley Quotes

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

I don't have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

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.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

I [Moses] am not a man of words.

Unlike his father, Churchill was not a natural speaker.

Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory !!

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.

In an easy matter. Anybody can be eloquent.

I'm an orator, a raconteur.

What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.

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

I enjoy my public speaking. That's what I love doing. It's what I'm good at.

Trust me, I have never written a speech in my life, and if I have my way, I never will.

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 aim of the sculptor is to convince us that he is a sculptor; the aim of the orator, is to convince us that he is not an orator.

The practice of public speaking flourishes in every peaceful and free state.

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.

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.

A candidate for office can have no greater advantage than muddled syntax; no greater liability than a command of language.

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

Great speech is impassioned; small speech cantankerous.