Persuasive Speaking Quotes

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.

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

I use a different style if I'm speaking to a big crowd; I can gin up folks pretty well. But when I'm in these town hall settings, my job is not to throw them a lot of red meat. I want to give them a sense of my thought process.

The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction.

When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, 'Action, Action, Action.'

I think, for me, one of the things I've been blessed with is the ability to speak with clarity.

Speech is the best show a man puts on.

In an easy matter. Anybody can be eloquent.

Gold is a deep-persuading orator.

There is no talent so pernicious as eloquence to those who have it under command.

Chauncy Burr ... talks well, possibly better than he thinks. But this is a common failing.

English is the perfect language for preachers because it allows you to talk until you think of what to say.

Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view.

When an English man speaks well, for example now, and this is another way of putting us down, they say he's "eloquent" you see. "Oh, eloquent chap they are!" An Irish person speak well, they say, "Ah, you have the gift of the gab." "Ah, you kissed the blarney stone." You see, all of this putting us down.

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

Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.

What passes out of one's mouth passes into a hundred ears. It is a great misfortune not to have sense enough to speak well.

Eloquence wins its great and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our opponents as from those of our friends.

An effective speaker knows that the success or failure of his talk is not for him to decide - it will be decided in the minds and hearts of his hearers.

There is no power like oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears, Cicero by . . . swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished; that of the other continues to this day.

What the people call eloquence is the facility some persons have of speaking alone and for a long time, aided by extravagant gestures, a loud voice, and powerful lungs.

I listened to Hillary [Clinton], and I heard the double talk. She's so good at it, and I'm not making this up, that the Communist Chinese have sent their cadres to study her speeches. They say she's the finest propagandist they've ever heard.