Quotes on Public Speaking

A talk is a voyage. It must be charted. The speaker who starts nowhere, usually gets there.

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

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it. If this requires public speaking or networking or other activities that make you uncomfortable, do them anyway. But accept that they're difficult, get the training you need to make them easier, and reward yourself when you're done.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

The people are to be taken in very small doses.

I have never seen an ass who talked like a human being, but I have met many human beings who talked like asses.