Some of My Favorite Quotes on Public Speaking

The mind is a wonderful thing—it starts working the minute you are born and never stops until you get up to speak in public. (Roscoe Drummond)

No speech can be entirely bad, if it is short enough. (Irving S. Cobb)

If it's true that the average person fears public speaking even more than death, then I suppose a guy at a funeral would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy. (Jerry Seinfield)

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. (Robert Southey)

An audience will forgive a speaker almost any lack if he or she is manifestly earnest about his proposal. Earnestness moves our emotions, thaws our indifference, and gives us faith. (James Winans)

Be sincere; be brief; be seated. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

It's not what I say. It's how I say it. (Mae West)

Make thyself a craftsman in speech, for thereby thou shalt gain the upper hand. (Inscription found in a 3,000 year-old Egyptian Tomb)

If all my talents and powers were to be taken from me by some unscrutable Providence, and I had my choice of keeping but one, I would unhesitatingly ask to be allowed to keep the power of speaking, for through it I would quickly recover all the rest. (Daniel Webster)

He can best be described as once of those orators who, before they get up, do not know what they are going to say; when the are speaking, do not know what they are saying; and when they sit down, do not know what they have said. (Winston Churchill, referring to Lord Charles Beresford in 1911)

There are only two parts to a speech; you make a statement and you prove it. (Aristotle)

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time, a tremendous whack. (Winston Churchill)

Have a message and think of yourself as the Western Union Telegram boy instructed to deliver it. We pay slight attention to the boy. It is the telegram we want. The message—that is the thing. Keep your mind on it. Keep your heart in it. Then talk as if you were determined to say it. (Dale Carnegie)

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. (Robert Southey)

In the marketplace of ideas, the person who communicates clearly is also the person who is seen as thinking clearly. (D. Uchida)

There are two types of speakers. Those who get nervous and those who are liars. (Mark Twain)

The more words you put on a slide, the less impact they have… While they're reading your slide they're not listening to you. (Martin Conradi and Richard Hall)

One of the great pleasures for an audience is the experience of quickly grasping what you're getting at… Presentations that cut to the chase rarely annoy your audience or put them to sleep. (Henry Boettinger)

The audience doesn't separate the actor from the dance. (W.B. Yeats)

Make everything as simple as possible but no simpler. (Albert Einstein)