Oratory Quotes

“The object of oratory is not truth but persuasion.”

“Oratory is the power to talk people out of their sober and natural opinions.”

“The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.”

“Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master.”

“For Alwyn's grandfather, who was known as "the greatest talker in the country," used words which no one else understood, words which he did not understand, and words which do not exist, to swell a passionate theme, to confound his neighbors in an argument, and for their own sake. He would say, for example, "My farm was the very apocalypse of fertility, but the renter has rested on his oars till it is good for nothing," or "Manifest the bounty to pass the salt shaker in my direction." Something of the Bible, something of an Irish inheritance, something of a liar's anxiety, made of his most ordinary remark a strange and wearisome oratory.”

“In the world of oratory, the cunning atheist declares himself a believer so as to preserve access to the rich fund of tales from religious texts and to powerful concepts like God, fate, angels, the soul, & the afterlife.”

“Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in anycommonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if theytend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for whichthey are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the readytalker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage,sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the bodypolitic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admirethe gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to dowrong to the republic.”

“The object of oratory alone is not truth but persuasion.”

“Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.”