90 Oration Quotes

Following is our list of oration quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about way of speaking.

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Famous Oration Quotes

ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography. — Ambrose Bierce

OVATION, n. n ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation. A lesser "triumph." — Ambrose Bierce

Oratory is just like prostitution: you must have little tricks. — Vittorio Emanuele Orlando

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place. — Samuel Johnson

In oratory the will must predominate. - David Hare

In oratory the will must predominate. — David Hare

OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury. — Ambrose Bierce

This process is alchemy: its founder is the smith Vulcan. — Paracelsus

In oratory affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn. — Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury

All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals — Doreen Valiente

Sunrise: day's great progenitor. — Emily Dickinson

The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true! — Danny Kaye

Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for lovers, lacking--God warn us!--matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss. — William Shakespeare

Hark to that shrill, sudden shout, The cry of an applauding multitude, Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields The living mass as if he were its soul! — William C. Bryant

In saffron-colored mantle from the tides Of Oceans rose the Morning to bright light TO gods and men. — Homer

The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of 'life. — Keith Haring

Short Oration Quotes

  • Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
  • Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
  • There is no true orator who is not a hero. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • The poet is the nearest borderer upon the orator. — Ben Jonson
  • A man profits more by the sight of an idiot than by the orations of the learned. — Arabic Proverbs
  • If you can't write your message in a sentence, you can't say it in an hour. — Dianna Daniels Booher
  • What orators lack in depth they make up for in length. — Montesquieu
  • Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
  • I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Oration Image Quotes

Way Of Speaking Quotes

The most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God. That means finding constant pleasure in His divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way. — Brother Lawrence

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood. — Josephine Baker

I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind. — John Diefenbaker

One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality — Antonio Gramsci

There's several ways of saying what's on your mind. And in states and counties where it ain't too healthy to talk too loud, speak your mind, or even vote like you want to, folks have found other ways of getting the word around. One of the mainest ways is by singing. — Woody Guthrie

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul - Plato

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul — Plato

We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew of no peace, are now called to be...a church...of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace. — Menno Simons

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination. — Sonia Sotomayor

I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university. — Albert Einstein

Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death. - Miyamoto Musashi

Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death. — Miyamoto Musashi

Oratory Quotes

A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest — Winston Churchill

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence. — John Milton

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable. - Marcus Tullius Cicero

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion. - Thomas Babington Macaulay

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion. - Thomas B. Macaulay

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory. — Emily Post

Next to fried foods, the South has suffered most from oratory. - Brooks Hays

Next to fried foods, the South has suffered most from oratory. — Brooks Hays

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action. — Plutarch

The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

The sense of war, the extraordinary bravery of the Allied armies, the numbers, the losses, the real suffering that disappears in time and commemorative oratory, are not marked out in any red guidebook of the emotions, but they are present if you look. — John Vinocur

People Writing About Oration

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Read quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce
quotes on war, love

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Read quotes by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero
quotes on law

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Read quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
quotes on love

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Read quotes by Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson
quotes on writing, life and love

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Read quotes by David Hare

David Hare
quotes on love, leadership and life

60 286
Read quotes by Paracelsus

Paracelsus
quotes on life, nature and death

85 1830

More Oration Quotes

A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press. — Thomas Hobbes

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

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

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. — Elihu Burritt

Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed. [Ger., Allein der Vortrag macht des Redners Gluck, Ich fuhl es wohl noch bin ich weit zuruck.] — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy. — Aristophanes

...True prayer is measured by weight, not by length. A single groan before God may have more fullness of prayer in it than a fine oration of great length. — Charles Spurgeon

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths. — Philibert Joseph Roux

Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men; and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,--that they shall hear worse orators than themselves. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If democracy, in essence, means the abolition of class domination, then why should not a socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration? — Vladimir Lenin

The only time that most women give their orating husbands undivided attention is when the old boys mumble in their sleep. — Wilson Mizner

Oh, where is man That mortal god, that hath no mortal kin Or like on earth? Shall Nature's orator The interpreter of all her mystic strains Shall he be mute in Nature's jubilee? — Hartley Coleridge

Would ministers preach for eternity! They would then act the part of true Christian orators, and not only calmly and cooly inform the understanding, but, by persuasive, pathetic address, endeavour to move the affections and warm the heart. — George Whitefield

It is certain that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians, men of the most brilliant and imposing talents, have labored as hard, if not harder, than day laborers; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is that they have taken more pains than other men. — Orison Swett Marden

I don't profess to be a healer, a minister, a priest. I feel as an entertainer I can do more good for the world than I would if I were a soapbox orator or a self-made politician. — Liberace

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

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

Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion. — Aristotle

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

A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow. — Steve Lacy

The passions are the only orators which always persuade. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

It is delivery that makes the orators success. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A man never becomes an orator if he has something to say. — American Proverbs

Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler. — Oscar Wilde

The simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Let arms give place to the robe, and the laurel of the warriors yield to the tongue of the orator. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator. — Alphonse De Lamartine

The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him. — Thomas Carlyle

Who can wonder at the attractiveness... of the bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator? — Marsilio Ficino

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

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