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

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.

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.

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!

PowerPoint makes us stupid.

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

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

Chemistry can be a good and bad thing. Chemistry is good when you make love with it. Chemistry is bad when you make crack with it.

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

A person standing in front of an audience without enthusiasm for his subject and his actions is disconnected from his spirit.

I write all my sermons.

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

At first, I wasn’t really keen on the idea of me being on stage having to sing in front of people.

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

I write all of my own speeches.

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

I’m a Sagittarius, and one of our major qualities is that we’re blindly optimistic.

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

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.

How can a president not be an actor?

In oratory the will must predominate.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

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.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

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

I spoke to a million in one service, in Korea, in Seoul. And that was the largest audience I ever have had.

It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

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 can move any crowd.

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

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

No matter how much you rehearse on that stage, once you add 30,000 screaming people with flashing cameras into the equation, it’s pretty intense.

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.

I think that if I would talk on a political subject, if I talk about it, it would divide the audience on that issue. That’s not my issue.

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it’s never ‚oh my god, its all going down the tubes‘, like the blues often is.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn’t make it.

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.

I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

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

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.

Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.

If somebody’s dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they’re going to have to take what they get.

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

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.

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.

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.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

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.

Children always turn to the light.

I’m much more comfortable and confident running out on the field in front of 70,000 people instead of standing in front of a camera trying to say some lines. The people who do that as a profession are very talented because it’s certainly not easy.

Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.

Our forces saved the remnants of the Jewish people of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn land of Israel. Along with all men of good will, I salute the young state and wish it well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think Pat Robertson is a terrific fellow.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.