I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.

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

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

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

I think that more flow of information, the ability to stay connected to more people makes people more effective as people. And I mean, that’s true socially. It makes you have more fun, right. It feels better to be more connected to all these people. You have a richer life.

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

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

I have been – I have spoken in Bir Zeit a number of times.

I am not going to be a mouthpiece for language that I detest.

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

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.

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

If you can’t move and talk to people that you see, it’s not really my scene.

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

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.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

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

I’ve got a great sense of humor.

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.

Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.

For some reason I did something where I realized I could get a reaction. That was when I broke out of my shell at school, because I really didn’t have any friends or anything like that and I just kind of was going along, and then finally I did this zany thing, and all of a sudden I had tons of friends.

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.

I think what we’ve found is that when you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about, they tend to be more engaging. I think that we’re really going to see this huge shift where a lot of industry is and products are just going to be remade to be social.

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.

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.

I take risks because I get bored. And I get bored very easily.

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

They’ve got this crazy actor who’s 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they’re probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.

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?

Girls talk to each other like men talk to each other. But girls have an eye for detail.

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.

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 am a tough guy.

I like a man who grins when he fights.

I write all of my own speeches.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

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

There will be days when I walk in an arena and people will cheer and then there might be days when I walk in an arena and people might boo, but it all sounds the same to me because it’s all just noise that lets me know that I’m relevant.

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

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

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

People are really talkative in New York. Someone always comes up to me and says ‚Hi‘ during the day.

My genetic make-up is one of physicality. I’m a visceral guy.

I can move any crowd.

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

I write all my sermons.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

When it comes to knowing what to say, to charm, I always had it.

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.

There’s certainly a side of me that isn’t completely… sane. Or completely ‚even‘ all the time. We all have our dark sides.

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

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.

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

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

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

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

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

The greatest service that can be offered to children who show personality traits or inclinations that might not be understood by the adults around them is to allow them to express their own unique humanity.