Orator Quotes

“Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.”

— Sigmund Freud

“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

“Human, you are a machine, an organism, an animal, a primate, an artist, an athlete, a thinker, a sponge, a spirit, a comedian, a connoisseur, a cycle of breath in and breath out, an inventor, an expressor, an orator, a lover, an explorer, a creator, evolved. Your mind paints the flowers and the sky using the mind's eye as a paintbrush and light as paint. Splashing life across the blank canvas of reality. That's what you do. Every moment of every day.”

— Laren Grey Umphlett

“Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images, the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire: that is MUHAMMAD. As regards all the standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask IS THERE ANY MAN GREATER THAN HE?”

— Alphonse De Lamartine

“Indeed, we can always better understand and appreciate a man's real character by the manner in which he conducts himself towards those who are the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of the seemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his public exhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman.”

— Samuel Smiles

“This Jesus of Nazereth without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caeser, Muhammad and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on matters human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke such words of life as were never spoke before or since and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator poet; without writing a single line, He set more pens in motion and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times.”

— JOHN SCHAFF

“A bigot is a stone-deaf orator.”

— Kahlil Gibran

“Ren ... Did you know that Winston Churchill, the greatest orator of all time and one of the greatest leaders in the world, had a speech impediment? All of us botch our words from time to time. And honestly I'd much rather stammer than put my foot in my mouth, and I've done more than my fair share of that. You have no reason to be embarrassed or ashamed for a biological misfire you can't help. It's not an indictment on your intelligence, but it is on the the humanity and decency of anyone cruel enough to mock you for it.”

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

“I delight to come to my bearings,-not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,-not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;-not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,-not suppose a case, but take the case that is”

— Henry David Thoreau

“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

“I was always exceedingly delighted with that saying of Chrysostom, "The foundation of our philosophy is humility"; and yet more pleased with that of Augustine: "As the orator, when asked, What is the first precept in eloquence? answered, Delivery: What is the second? Delivery: What is the third? Delivery: so if you ask me concerning the precepts of the Christian religion, I will answer, first, second, and third, Humility.”

— John Calvin

“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

“The Columbian Orator.”

— Frederick Douglass

“Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.”

— Sinclair Lewis

“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

“An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.”

— Maria Edgeworth

“The Man Without a Country, was an orator no one could silence and no one could answer.”

— Thomas Starr King

“If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.”

— Wendell Phillips

“I was conscious of being wordy as a child. I was a terrible talker. I memorised the Latin names of flowers at five; I was shown off as a freak. My father encouraged me to be wordier than I was: he'd been a street orator at the time of Mosley, and his ideal primary concert speech was Henry V's speech before Harfleur.”

— Simon Schama

“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

“Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Winston Churchill, today an idealized hero of history, was in his time variously considered a bombastic blunderer, an unstable politician, an intermittently inspired orator, a reckless self-dramatizer, a voluminous able writer in an old-fashioned vein, and a warmongering drunkard. Through most of his long life he cut an antic, brilliant, occasionally absurd figure in British affairs. He never won the trust of the people until 1940, when he was sixty-six years old, and”

— Herman Wouk

“I have not much patience with a certain class of Christians nowadays who will hear anybody preach so long as they can say, 'He is very clever, a fine preacher, a man of genius, a born orator.' Is cleverness to make false doctrine palatable? Why, sirs, to me the ability of a man who preaches error is my sorrow rather than my admiration.”

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it.”

— Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

“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

“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

“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

“An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.”

— Michel De Montaigne

“The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without difficulty and without reluctance; and posterity will confess that the character of Theodosius might furnish the subject of a sincere and ample panegyric. The wisdom of his laws and the success of his arms rendered his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects and of his enemies. He loved and practised the virtues of domestic life, which seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings.”

— Edward Gibbon

“Historians will come to their own judgments about President Kennedy. Here is how I choose to remember him. He was an heir to wealth who felt the anguish of the poor. He was an orator of excellence who spoke for the voiceless. He was a son of Harvard who reached out to the sons and daughters of Appalachia. He was a man of special grace who had a special care for the retarded and handicapped. He was a hero of war who fought hardest for peace. He said and proved in word and deed that one man can make a difference.”

— Edward Kennedy

“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

“The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator.”

— Ben Jonson

“Here comes the orator with his flood of words and his drop of reason.”

— Benjamin Franklin

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Every really able man, in whatever direction he works - a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter - if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his Creator?”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“No orator can top the one who can give good nicknames.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is no true orator who is not a hero.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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

“The orator is thereby an orator that keeps his feet ever on a fact.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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

“Hume's doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot, the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the same quantity of pleasant excitement.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“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

“God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“If you did wed my sister for her wealth,
Then for her wealth's sake use her with more kindness;
Or, if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;
Muffle your false love with some show of blindness;
Let not my sister read it in your eye;
Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator;
Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;
Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger;
Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;
Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;
Be secret-false.”

— William Shakespeare

“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

“There has never been a poet or orator who thought another better than himself.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Nothing in oratory is more important than to win for the orator the favour of his hearer, and to have the latter so affected as to be swayed by something resembling an impulse of the spirit impetu quodam animi or emotion perturbatione, rather than by judgment or deliberation. For men decide far more problems by hate, or love, or lust, or rage, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or illusion, or some other inward emotion aliqua permotione mentis, than by reality or authority, or any legal standard, or judicial precedent or statute.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero