I have never talked publicly or privately about the Jewish people, including conversations with President Nixon, except in the most positive terms.

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.

When Caroline Kennedy managed to say ‚you know‘ more than 200 times in an interview with the New York ‚Daily News,‘ and on 130 occasions while talking to ‚The New York Times‘ during her uninspired attempt to become a hereditary senator, she proved, among other things, that she was (a) middle-aged and (b) middle class.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

I liked school, but I used to dread those moments when the teacher would call me up to give an oral report. I forced myself to deal with it and not dwell on the class in front of me – to keep a straight face, give the report and concentrate on getting it right. That’s normally how I perform. That’s how I am.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

I just didn’t want to get out there anymore; I didn’t want to get back into what I call ‚the swamp.‘ And the other reason why is I don’t think it’s good for the presidency for a former president to be opining about his successor. President Obama’s got plenty of critics – and I’m just not gonna be one.

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

Very rarely do I talk off the top of my head on stage. I’m not an improv guy. I’m a writer-guy who presents what he’s written.

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.

I realised a little bit to my astonishment that I can give a lecture for a thousand people, and there will be this tumultuous applause, so, you know, I have the feeling well, it can’t be all that bad.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

Our lifestyle was not in any way a negative. That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children.

When you walk out onstage in front of 65,000 people, it can bring you to tears.

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years.

I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.

I have spoken to Chinese leaders occasionally on human rights, but I’ve always done it in private.

I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, ‚If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.‘

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

So when I speak in front of thousands, tens of thousands of people, I don’t really get nervous because I know what I want to say and I know what message I want to give.

As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.

I’ve had the honor of speaking at many commencements.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

I go onstage and I talk, and I remember what I’m saying, and I track it.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

I’ve been known to preach.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

I still get very scared when I step in front of a live audience.

Wherever I go meeting the public… spreading a message of human values, spreading a message of harmony, is the most important thing.

In oratory the will must predominate.

Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.

When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I’d get so panicked that I would stutter.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it’s always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.

Children always turn to the light.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

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

How can a president not be an actor?

PowerPoint makes us stupid.

I write all my sermons.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

In my opinion, the only way to conquer stage fright is to get up on stage and play. Every time you play another show, it gets better and better.

When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I’m teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing.

It’s really fun to be on stage in front of people.

I think Pat Robertson is a terrific fellow.