“If it requires great tact to speak to the purpose, it requires no less to know when to be silent.”
“Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down.”
“Find out what's keeping them up nights and offer hope. Your theme must be an answer to their fears.”
“Oratory is the art of making deep noises form the chest sound like important massages from the brain.”
“Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.”
“Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.”
“The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them.”
“Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.”
“He who comes from afar may lie without fear of contradiction as he is sure to be listened to with the utmost attention.”
“Every speaker has a mouth; An arrangement rather neat. Sometimes it's filled with wisdom. Sometimes it's filled with feet.”
“I don't like jokes in speeches. I do like wit and humor. A joke is to humor what pornography is to erotic language in a good novel.”
“Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch those judgments, such as they are.”
“There are three things to aim at in public speaking: First to get into your subject, then to get your subject into yourself, and lastly, to get your subject into your hearers.”
“Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid.”
“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use the pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time; a tremendous whack.”
“The relationship of the toastmaster to the speaker should be the same as that of the fan to the fan dancer. It should call attention to the subject without making any particular effort to cover it.”
“A man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man. The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them. They like a man who expresses their own superficial thoughts in a manner that appears to be profound. This enables them to feel that they are themselves profound.”