Top 100 Orator Quotes
#2. In this world of gossip, a good listener is rarer than a great orator.
Christopher Pike
#5. No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client.
Anthony Trollope
#6. I came, he said.
Good Lord! If there were an orator-of-the-year award, he would be in dire danger of winning it.
Mary Balogh
#7. An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.
Theophrastus
#8. I think some orator commenting upon that fate said that though the winds of heaven might whistle around an Englishman's cottage, the King of England could not.
John James Ingalls
#9. No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#10. It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.
Joshua Reynolds
#11. It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.
George McGovern
#12. For I am no orator. What would I have said if they had let me go on? That it is worse to beat a man's feet to pulp than to kill him in combat? That it brings shame on everyone when a girl is permitted to flog a man? That spectacles of cruelty corrupt the hearts of the innocent?
J.M. Coetzee
#14. The phonograph and kinetoscope may some day seize and perpetuate all save the magnetic touch, but that weird, illusive, indefinable yet wonderfully real power by which the orator subdues may never be caught by science or preserved for the cruel dissecting knife of the critic.
David Josiah Brewer
#15. I need to hear the words of this book - its truth, forgiveness, hope - as much as anybody." Nathaniel looked up with an apologetic smile. "I know I'm no great orator. But I ask you to bear with me as I fumble through this new duty.
Julie Klassen
#16. There wasn't any more truth in over half of what any so-called orator said. If it wasn't a Deliberate Lie, why it was an Exaggerated Falsehood.
Will Rogers
#17. Like a rough orator, that brings more truth Than rhetoric, to make good his accusation.
Philip Massinger
#19. However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.
Henry David Thoreau
#20. Justice, not expedience, must be the guiding light. The orator must fix his eye on the polestar of justice, and plough straight thither. The moment he glances toward expediency, he falls from his high estate.
John Peter Altgeld
#21. The Man Without a Country, was an orator no one could silence and no one could answer.
Thomas Starr King
#22. Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.
Alphonse De Lamartine
#23. Here comes the orator with his flood of words and his drop of reason.
Benjamin Franklin
#24. My friend," said the orator to him, "do you believe the Pope to be the Anti-Christ?"
"I have not heard it," answered Candide; "but whether he be, or whether he not, I want bread.
Voltaire
#27. The matter is as it is in all other cases: if it is naturally in you to be a good orator, a notable orator you will be when you have acquired knowledge and practice ...
Plato
#28. Caesar declared that an orator should 'avoid an unusual word as the helmsman of a ship avoided a reef'.
Adrian Goldsworthy
#30. 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.
Keshub Chandra Sen
#31. There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!
Charles Caleb Colton
#32. The poet is poor, but the orator is made by cultivation." Horace
John Taliaferro
#33. 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.
G.K. Chesterton
#34. A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience.
Leslie Stephen
#35. Who can wonder at the attractiveness ... of the bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator?
Marsilio Ficino
#36. Place of the philosopher the singer is called in, and in place of the orator the teacher of stagecraft, and while the libraries are shut up forever like tombs, water-organs are manufactured and lyres as large as carriages.
Stephen Greenblatt
#37. Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,
a certain robust and radiant physical health; or
shall I say?
great volumes of animal heat.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#38. The cello is a hero because of its register - its tenor voice. It is a masculine instrument, whereas the violin is feminine because of its soprano pitch. When the cello enters in the Dvorak Concerto, it is like a great orator.
Mstislav Rostropovich
#39. Where judgment has wit to express it, there's the best orator.
William Penn
#40. For converse among men, beautiful persons have less need of the mind's commending qualities. Beauty in itself is such a silent orator, that it is ever pleading for respect and liking, and by the eyes of others is ever sending, to their hearts for love.
Owen Feltham
#41. You could be the World's greatest orator and if you don't say anything while orating, they are going to walk out on you after a while.
Will Rogers
#43. Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#44. To feminine eyes a man's prestige, or his fame, envelops him in a luminous haze which obscures his faults. The triumphs of an aviator, an actor, a football player, an orator are often responsible for the beginning of a love affair.
Andre Maurois
#45. An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
William Hazlitt
#46. I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#48. A strange and somewhat impassive physiognomy is often, perhaps, an advantage to an orator, or leader of any sort, because it helps to fix the eye and fascinate the mind.
Charles Horton Cooley
#49. Let arms yield to the toga, let the [victor's] laurel yield to the [orator's] tongue.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#50. Oh yes, I got up on my hindlegs like an orator and sounded off to everyone.
Saul Bellow
#51. Where, then, is our orator running off to, who was going to speak about a palm, but talks of nothing but a gourd? It started as a wine jar, why does it end as a water jug?
Martin Luther
#52. Barack Obama is probably one of the brightest in terms of sheer intelligence ... also probably the best orator we've ever had as a president.
Mario Cuomo
#53. Let arms give place to the robe, and the laurel of the warriors yield to the tongue of the orator.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#54. However tiresome to others, the most indefatigable orator is never tedious to himself. The sound of his own voice never loses its harmony to his own ear; and among the delusions, which self-love is ever assiduous in attempting to pass upon virtue, he fancies himself to be sounding the sweetest tones
John Quincy Adams
#58. The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.
Ben Jonson
#59. One of the most familiar tricks of the orator or propagandist is to leave certain things unsaid, things that are highly relevant to the argument, but that might be challenged if they were made explicit. While
Mortimer J. Adler
#60. Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.
Sinclair Lewis
#62. 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!
William C. Bryant
#63. It cannot reasonably be doubted, but a little miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives as complete enjoyment as the greatest orator, who triumphs in the splendour of his eloquence, while he governs the passions and resolutions of a numerous assembly.
David Hume
#64. I think you can be the greatest orator of all time, the greatest motivator of all times, but if those players know that you don't care about them, and you don't try to understand them, then they're never going to hear what you have to say.
Mike Singletary
#65. Christopher Hitchens was a great warrior, a magnificent orator, a pugilist and a gentleman. He was kind, but he took no prisoners when arguing with idiots.
Richard Dawkins
#66. It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orator of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.
George Bernard Shaw
#67. Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#68. It was Mario Cuomo's great gift and our good fortune that he was both a sterling orator and a passionate public servant. His life was a blessing.
William J. Clinton
#70. He could be as memorable an orator as his father, particularly when he was speaking on that topic that had captured his imagination;
Robert A. Caro
#71. Oh, where is man That mortal god, that hath no mortal kin Or like on earth? Shall Nature's orator The interpreter of all her mystic strains Shall he be mute in Nature's jubilee?
Hartley Coleridge
#72. I am the first to admit that I am no great orator or no person that got where I have gotten by any William Jennings Bryan technique.
Gerald R. Ford
#73. Further, the orator should be able to prove opposites, as in logical arguments;
Aristotle.
#74. It is easy to raise a laugh, but dangerous, for it is the greatest test of an orator's control of his audience to be able to land them again on the solid earth of sober thinking.
Russell H. Conwell
#75. Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator.
Charles Caleb Colton
#76. A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.
Steve Lacy
#77. An orator is a good man who is skilled in speaking.
Cato The Elder
#80. The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.
Henry David Thoreau
#81. Let me get this straight.Your lunchroom speech went a little something like this." I put my hands out on front of me like I was a Roman Orator enunciating for the crowd. "I, Nick Krieger,defender of women, would never denounce the crotch. I am above the crotch.
Jennifer Echols
#82. Men and words are ready made, and you, O Painter, if you do not know how to make your figures move, are like an orator who knows not how to use his words.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#83. Christopher Hitchens was a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusion far wider than anybody I know.
Richard Dawkins
#84. It is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness which the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.
Aristotle.
#85. There are but few talents requisite to become a popular preacher; for the people are easily pleased if they perceive any endeavors in the orator to please them. The meanest qualifications will work this effect if the preacher sincerely sets about it.
Oliver Goldsmith
#86. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob, before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
Henry David Thoreau
#87. British Statesman, parliamentary orator and political thinker, Edmund Burke once said, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." This is true to say the least.
Robert Paulson
#89. The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him.
Thomas Carlyle
#90. I don't profess to be a healer, a minister, a priest. I feel as an entertainer I can do more good for the world than I would if I were a soapbox orator or a self-made politician.
Liberace
#91. 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.
David Josiah Brewer
#92. An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.
Michel De Montaigne
#93. An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#94. It is true the orator may make a myriad replica of his own passion out of those who listen to him. But that does not prove he is right or they are not fools.
George William Russell
#95. Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.
Oscar Wilde
#97. In the world of oratory, the cunning atheist declares himself a believer so as to preserve access to the rich fund of tales from religious texts and to powerful concepts like God, fate, angels, the soul, & the afterlife.
Agona Apell
#98. Today is half of Yesterday and Tomorrow, Choose Today to make Tomorrow
Yando Wanii Nimbo
#99. Robert Ingersoll came to [a small Midwest town] to speak ... , and after he had gone the question of the divinity of Christ for months occupied the minds of the citizens.
Sherwood Anderson
#100. The ground will never complain how much weight you add on it, how much you dig it and how much you grow on it, How long you live on it. Unused ground is an abomination to nature.
Yando Wanii Nimbo
