Let me tell you, Barack Obama is the most down dude in the world, but he's so smart; so articulate, such an amazing speaker; such a passionate man. He's humble.
Bill Clinton was a very, very good speaker. But like many people who are great speakers and great thinkers and have a lot of energy and ambition, he talked too much.
Hark to that shrill, sudden shout, The cry of an applauding multitude, Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields The living mass as if he were its soul!
I'm always a bit suspicious of writers who have the gift of the gab.
A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.
... the gustiest and gloriest, loudest and lustiest, the deadliest and damndest orator ever heard on this or any other earth ..., the champion boob-bumper of all epoches.
Referring to demagogue Gerald L. K. Smith:
The Michelle Obama that her old friends remember, that people knew in Chicago, she was a really incisive social critic. She knew how to drive an argument home. People liked her both in the workplace and socially because she was so frank.
The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiargift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease.
Shaun has working his audience into a frenzy down to a science; by the time he's done with them, they get excited by the mysterious discovery of pocket lint. It's impressive, but I'd rather watch him move. There's something wonderful about the way he lets go, becoming all energy and excitement as he outlines what's coming next. Maybe it's geeky for a girl my age to admit she still loves her brother. I don't care. I love him, and one day I'll bury him, and until then, I'm going to be grateful that I'm allowed to watch him talk.
In politics as in private life, [Henry] Clay is essentially a gamester, and, with a vigorous intellect, an ardent spirit, a handsome elocution, though with a mind very defective in elementary knowledge, and a very undigested system of ethics, he has all the qualities which belong to that class of human characters.
If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.
Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.
In the campaign of 1890 she made speeches so full of fiery eloquence, of righteous wrath, and fierce denunciation of the oppressors, that she became the delight of the people of the new party and the detestation of the followers of the old. Seldom, if ever, was a woman so vilified and so misrepresented by malignant newspaper attacks. A woman of other quality would have sunk under the avalanche. She was quite competent to cope with all that was visited upon her. Indeed, the abuse did her much service. The people but loved her the more for the enemies she made. Her chiefest distinguishing gift is her powerful voice; deep and resonant, its effect is startling and controlling. Her speeches are philippics. She hurls sentences as Jove hurled thunderbolts.
Description of Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1853-1933 Agrarian Reformer and Populist
[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.
You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.
I always think a great speaker convinces us not by force of reasoning, but because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept.
Hearing him speak is so fun, reassuring I dare say. You can say all you like about Sihanouk: that he's an atrocious liar, a madman, a fraud, a swashbuckler, an international blot. You may think that, but you cannot deny how in this age in which the political arena seems to generate only dull, obtuse and boring characters with no imagination, he's a kind of miracle.
President Trump has never been accused of being an eloquent or charismatic speaker. In fact, his rough-edged style has roiled commentators and professional politicos inside the Beltway for years, while being cheered by his supporters across the country.
A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience.
The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
The audience will always forgive you for being wrong and exciting, but never for being right and dull.
Swami Vivekananda: The genuine orator exercises a sort of hypnotism over his audience. I have listened to many orators, Indian, English and American; but Keshub Chunder Sen is easily the greatest of all.
He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself.
We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say; the very air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many deep.
My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. "This Land of Saints," and then as the applause died out, "Of plaster Saints;" his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.