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

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.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

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

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

Think not that humility is weakness; it shall supply the marrow of strength to thy bones. Stoop and conquer; bow thyself and become invincible.

I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

I’ve been known to preach.

I’m always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I’m going to get up in the morning.

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.

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.

If you ever see young artists, and they’re not sounding good, they sound good. They’re good singers. They wouldn’t be where they are if they didn’t sound good. It’s their nerves. Any time you see your favorite artist, and he’s or she’s screwing up or not hitting those notes, it’s not because she can’t hit it or she can’t sing; he or she is scared.

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

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.

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.

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

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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.

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

I don’t know if I’m selfless – I still want to make a great record. I want to make a hit record. I want to tour; that’s not completely selfless. But the truth is I’m not interested in people coming to my show for me as much as I am for them coming to my show for themselves. That’s always been how I am.

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.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from 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.

When I’m up there, and I know the show’s coming to a close, in my head I’m saying to myself, Oh man, you gotta get off and be a normal person again. That’s what I don’t like so much.

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

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.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

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

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.

Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in this world.

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.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

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.

I love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I’m not that comfortable, which I think is sort of clear.

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

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!

Always do what you are afraid to do.

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.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.

The reason I don’t tour is that I don’t know how to front a band. What would I do? I can’t really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.

I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president’s birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing ‚Happy Birthday,‘ like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, ‚Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!‘

If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

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.

The first two games for Churchill, I was so jittery that I didn’t know what to do. I was running more but didn’t know what to do. I’ve no bones accepting the fact that I didn’t know what was happening in the game.

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

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

I can move any crowd.

The Bible says to ‚fear not,‘ but this doesn’t mean you should never feel scared. It means when you do feel fear, keep going forward and do what you are supposed to do. Or as I like to say, do it afraid.

I get nervous when I don’t get nervous. If I’m nervous I know I’m going to have a good show.

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

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.