It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.
~ Sophocles
All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentleman he may pronounce as he pleases.
~ George Bernard Shaw
A dull speaker like a plain woman is credited with all the virtues for we charitably suppose that a surface so unattractive must be compensated by interior blessings.
~ A. P. Herbert
Once you get people laughing they're listening and you can tell them almost anything.
~ Herbert Gardner
Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradict everything you said today.
When a man gets talking about himself he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.
~ Josh Billings
In an easy cause any man may be eloquent.
~ Ovid
The object of oratory alone is not truth but persuasion.
~ Thomas Babington Macaulay
If no thought your mind does visit make your speech not too explicit.
~ Piet Hein
Oratory: the art of making deep noises from the chest sound like important messages from the brain.
~ H. I. Phillips
The glittering generalities of the speaker have left an impression more delightful than permanent.
~ Franklin J. Dickman
Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending - sit down.
~ Winston Churchill
First learn the meaning of what you say and then speak.
~ Epictetus
When a man is asked to make a speech the first thing he has to decide is what to say.
~ Gerald Ford
I've never thought my speeches were too long I've rather enjoyed them.
~ Hubert Humphrey
Blessed is the man who having nothing to say abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
~ George Eliot
Look wise say nothing and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
~ William Osier
I have learnt a good deal from my own talk.
~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton
Speech is the small change of silence.
~ George Meredith
If you don't say anything you won't be called on to repeat it.
~ Calvin Coolidge
In Maine we have a saying that there's no point in speaking unless you can improve on silence.
~ Edmund Muskie
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
~ William Shakespeare
