Quotes About Speeches

#1. Strictures, reproaches, and intemperate speeches from the Senator of Louisiana are really the wailings of an apostle of despair; he has lost control of himself, he is trying to play billiards with elliptical billiard balls and a spiral cue.

Huey Long

#2. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

Thomas Jefferson

#3. I hate politics and what are considered their appropriate measures. I hate notoriety, public meetings, public speeches, caucuses and everything that I know of which is apparently the necessary incident of politics - except doing public work to the best of my ability.

John Abbott

#4. In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs.

Beck

#5. John Kerry now getting slammed by the Republicans because of a botched joke he did about President Bush and Iraq in a recent speech. Kerry was stunned about this. He said, 'What? People are listening to my speeches?'

Jay Leno

#6. Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Thomas Jefferson

#7. Some of the most powerful speeches I have given have been delivered in the dedicated silence of my actions.

Steve Maraboli

#8. Good words do more than hard speeches, as the sunbeams, without any noise, will make the traveler cast off his cloak, which all the blustering winds could not do, but only make him bind it closer to him.

Robert Leighton

#9. I did not make any big speeches but acted upon working against corruption.

Narendra Modi

#10. Silence embeds thoughts better than speeches. If you are afraid of silence, you are afraid of your thoughts.

Rossana Condoleo

#11. It is a difficult task, O citizens, to make speeches to the belly, which has no ears.

Plutarch

#12. With God there is no need for long speeches.

Jane Frances De Chantal

#13. No more lies and speeches of delusions out of the reality of our existence

Mazigh Buzakhar

#14. Now there is a new request. To release transcripts of speeches that were given. When everybody agrees to do that, I will as well. It is important we all abide by the same standards. So let's do the tax return standard first, because that has been the standard for a long time.

Hillary Clinton

#15. All persons, places, and events in this book are real. Certain speeches and thoughts are necessarily constructions by the author. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, since God Almighty protects the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine.

Kurt Vonnegut

#16. If you go back and look at President Reagan's speeches, they bring you to tears almost.

Lawrence Bender

#17. If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived. (The Inconvenient Messiah, BYU Speeches, Feb 15, 1982)

Jeffrey R. Holland

#18. It is easy to love one's enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.

Anthony Trollope

#19. I don't want to lose you, I love you, and ... and that's all I've got.
As speeches went, it wasn't great. As feelings went ... different story.

Kristan Higgins

#20. In 2007, early in the improbable presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, the young first-term senator began a series of foreign-policy speeches that seemed too general to provide a guide to what he might do if elected.

Elliott Abrams

#21. Certainly Afghans in general and women in particular want a country in which security is a daily reality rather than a campaign slogan or the focus of drive-by speeches from diplomats dropping in for the day.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

#22. The only things I make money on are speeches and books.

Brandon Stanton

#23. Tell me bout this caveman with the clam moustache been barkin speeches all over Germany.

Esi Edugyan

#24. It's hard to make speeches with your hair in your face!

Michelle Obama

#25. Did you google 'best groveling speeches' while I was passed out?

Priscilla Glenn

#26. I didn't feel good about cutting out parts of very famous speeches, ... You think you somehow need all of it or you get none of it, but that's not true.

Tom Stoppard

#27. We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people to their senses.

Mario Cuomo

#28. I forgot Dumbledore trashed Hogwarts, refused to resign and ran off to the forest to make speeches to angry trolls.

J.K. Rowling

#29. It would be desirable if every Government, when it comes to power, should have its old speeches burnt.

Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden

#30. When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

Henry David Thoreau

#31. Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.

Will Rogers

#32. We teachers break our bodies to give you a shirt that you will wear in the future, to conferences, to presidential speeches, to autograph signings. That is up to you and if you can do that for at least in a little thank to us. Then thank you, thank you all.

Pedro A. Perez Raymond

#33. Nature doesn't make long speeches.

Laozi

#34. They (teenage boys)don't really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation.

Rob Lowe

#35. I thought making speeches for money was a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company, as so many people who leave public life do.

Hillary Clinton

#36. I do still get extremely nervous before speeches. My biggest fear is that I'll be standing there in front of hundreds of people and be incapable of talking. I'm afraid that I'll make a complete fool of myself and be unable to go on.

Marcus Buckingham

#37. The problem with people who live in a world of speeches and books and theories is they don't know how to fix things in the real world when they go wrong. They feign ignorance, blame others, and make another eloquent speech.

Kathleen Troia McFarland

#38. Even his own speeches bored him.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#39. For someone like me who, as a kid, walked to school muttering little political speeches to myself, it was irresistible to finally get a chance at political life for real. When the people of Etobicoke-Lakeshore elected me their MP, it changed me forever.

Michael Ignatieff

#40. They classify my motivational speeches as rants!

Kanye West

#41. The best feeling in the world is performing in front of a live audience who like what you're doing. I can understand why people become dictators just because of the thrill they get making the speeches.

Steve Coogan

#42. I can't go to bed if I haven't done my diary. I always record them just as I've always recorded all my interviews and speeches.

Tony Benn

#43. That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.

J.M. Coetzee

#44. My philosophy is that you don't motivate players with speeches; you have motivated players that you draft. That's where they come in, and those are the guys that are competitive. You can not teach competitiveness.

Phil Jackson

#45. Obama has become too dependent on formal speeches and set town halls. His idea of mixing it up is taking off his jacket.

Dee Dee Myers

#46. I'm no expert standing at a podium giving speeches. I share heartbeats. Compassion.

Elizabeth Berkley

#47. Consciousness is basic while thoughts are supreme. Speeches are nothing but the expression of thoughts and feelings. If there is no consciousness, nothing else could be there. At the same time, all forms of consciousness will not give the abilities to think and express thoughts.

Debasish Mridha

#48. I think speeches and fruit should always be fresh.

Nikki Giovanni

#49. I hate crowds and making speeches. I hate facing cameras and having to answer to a crossfire of questions. Why popular fancy should seize upon me, a scientist, dealing in abstract things and happy if left alone, is a manifestation of mass psychology that is beyond me.

Albert Einstein

#50. I've spent too much time giving speeches, traveling the world.

Billy Graham

#51. Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#52. I remembered the last time I put this thing into my eye it was more painful than watching old political speeches while listening to the "Macarena" and having a root canal performed by an angry, clumsy chimp.

John Zakour

#53. I cannot make speeches, Emma ... If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.

Jane Austen

#54. Sometimes Jane wished she were good at diplomatic speeches. She wished she'd mastered coquettish looks and innocent smiles. But she hadn't. She was singularly bad at those forms of persuasion. She was good at handing out money and opinions.

Courtney Milan

#55. In high school I was president of the Student Council, and I ended up doing a lot of speeches. After you do a few in front of different schools, you get really comfortable talking in front of an audience.

Osric Chau

#56. When I was 6 I became the poster child for my hospital and would go to banquets and make speeches. I did not get stage fright and I actually enjoyed talking to people of all ages.

Atticus Shaffer

#57. The greatest and truest models for all oratorsis Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators.

Woodrow Wilson

#58. 'The Chicken Soup for the Soul' books are the result of over 20 years of teaching seminars and giving speeches. The first book contains all of the stories that I used in my seminars to illustrate the points that I wanted to make.

Jack Canfield

#59. I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.

Pierre Trudeau

#60. never wanted her to worry that his love could be swayed by a prettier face or a better offer, as if either could exist in this world. But he was not prone to flowery words and emotional speeches. He had cultivated neither,

Jenny Lykins

#61. Speeches are much easier if you read them. I just find when I do that, it's harder to fire up the crowd.

Donald Trump

#62. This was that lucid and dangerous state with drinking, when everything began to shimmer; when there was meaning in the grain of the marble; when one could make the most offensive speeches.

Anne Rice

#63. I give them experiments and they respond with speeches.

Louis Pasteur

#64. I've been turning it over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward-it's not what people are used to-it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down.

George Eliot

#65. Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.

Garry Trudeau

#66. There were people who had sampled my voice from speeches when I was an Islamist and made them the chorus of pro-Islamist rap songs who then began talking about me as an apostate.

Maajid Nawaz

#67. I am notorious for making impassioned speeches about things nobody cares about.

Mindy Kaling

#68. I read all the speeches of the pope, his commentaries, and if the pope continues this way, I will go back to praying and go back to the church, and I'm not joking,

Raul Castro

#69. I started by studying Kiswahili to learn the dialect. Then, I studied tapes, documentaries, footage, and audio cassettes of Idi Amin's speeches. And I met with his brothers, his sisters, his ministers, his generals' all kinds of people, in order to try to understand him.

Forest Whitaker

#70. [ ... ] [E]very citizen has to avoid any activities and speeches that harm the image of the country and interests of the people.

Thein Sein

#71. The problem with State of the Union speeches is that they are, by their nature and design, alphabet soup. It's hard to know what a president really cares about when they run down a laundry list and check every issue box under the sun for fear they will offend some constituency if they don't.

Mark McKinnon

#72. Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.

Joe Strummer

#73. Your patience would fail you if I should continue to relate all the disrespectful speeches and treatment which your servants have been obliged to listen to and patiently to bear.

Peter Stuyvesant

#74. There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration.

David Foster Wallace

#75. I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches.

Patricia Highsmith

#76. I dont want to win? If that were the case why the heck am I on the bus 16 hours a day, shaking thousands of hands, giving hundreds of speeches, getting pillared in the press and cartoons and still staying on message to win?

George W. Bush

#77. Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labor equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal super-abundance.

Arthur Helps

#78. Love unspoken is the most tremendous force in the world. One is amazed at the way in which people waste their time making speeches, agitating, praying, even. They might save their breath. The great lovers of the world, in silence, rule the world.

Mary Webb

#79. The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers' own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs.

Russell Baker

#80. Half the people think I write Obama's speeches; the other half think I'm on 'Entourage.' So I'm at the level of fame where people kind of know who I am, but they confuse me with other people.

Jon Favreau

#81. Banquet: a plate of cold, hairy chicken and artificially coloured green peas completely surrounded by dreary speeches and appeals for donations.

Bennett Cerf

#82. I don't attach importance to great speeches or philosophy.

Jacques Santer

#83. There were speeches made in Congress in the very last session before the outbreak of the Rebellion, so ferocious as to show that their authors were under the influence of a real frenzy.

Edward Everett

#84. Convention speeches are powerful tools to bend the curve of public opinion. George H. W. Bush's 1988 convention speech is a great example. His son's speech was also quite powerful.

Mark McKinnon

#85. Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit.

Plutarch

#86. This policy cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches, and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron.

Otto Von Bismarck

#87. My dad is my everything. He always had the craziest speeches for Kylie and me growing up, good words to live by.

Kendall Jenner

#88. Leaders console the world with their speeches, heroes console the world with their actions.

Amit Kalantri

#89. I'd like to continue being involved with issues that animated my time as attorney general - criminal-justice reform and civil rights especially. I don't just want to give speeches; I'd like to involve myself in this work in a systematic way.

Eric Holder

#90. Never write down your speeches beforehand; if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.

Lord Chesterfield

#91. Hey, I'm not a politician. I'm a ham. I love to give speeches.

Norman Schwarzkopf

#92. When faced with the inevitable fatigue that comes with the recycling of speeches and the recycling of thoughts in a rather small stream of vortex, I am urged to not be ashamed of recycling.

Barbara Amiel

#93. This was another subject of criticism. She was being paid, as I recall, during the 1940's, what was then a princely sum, something like a dollar a word. I don't say that for the column, but for articles that she would write and things like that. And she made lots of speeches.

William A. Rusher

#94. Just by saying something was so, they believed that it was. I know know that these conquerors, like many before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it.

Laila Lalami

#95. [That] my body be buried as cheaply as possible and no speeches be permitted at my funeral.

Charles Bradlaugh

#96. It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag , a few speeches, and a national anthem; to this day I avoid the label "Lebanese," preferring the less restrictive "Levantine" designation.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#97. I love interviews, meeting fans, teaching workshops, giving speeches ... all of it.

MaryJanice Davidson

#98. When two people part, it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches.

Alain De Botton

#99. Like many of my friends and colleagues, I can't get enough of Obama news; latest polling, speeches, visits, reaction of world leaders.

Lucy Powell

#100. Our archaeological ancestry lost hair while growing sweat glands to reduce panting in the hot African sun. One outcome evolved the origin of our speech. Another conquered our ability to shut the hell up and listen. Now? Politicians grunting "On the Origin of Speeches" past one another.

Brian Spellman