Public Speaking Quotes

Public speaking? I speak to myself on the street!

I enjoy my public speaking. That's what I love doing. It's what I'm good at.

I found myself doing so much public speaking, more and more and bigger and bigger.

Believe it or not, the number one fear in America remains public speaking. And, in some ways, I think that is a real shame because we are so blessed to live in a country where we are able to express ourselves, so we should want to do that.

The public is wiser than the wisest critic.

Ah, the first rule of public speaking -- always start with a joke.

Public Speaking is very easy.

Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle.

The trouble with the public is that there is too much of it; what we need in public is less quantity and more quality.

Always be shorter than anybody dared to hope.

To be a person is to have a story to tell.

Say not always what you know, but always know what you say.

Whenever people have trouble public speaking, it's because they are just thinking about themselves.

A talk is a voyage. It must be charted. The speaker who starts nowhere, usually gets there.

Good public speaking is based on good private thinking

Public speaking professionals say that you win or lose the battle to hold your audience in the first 30 seconds of a given presentation.

If you don't know what you want to achieve in your presentation your audience never will.

The most precious things in speech are the pauses.

Death is the number two fear that people have and public speaking is the first!

If there's anything a public servant hates to do it's something for the public.

There are only two types of speakers in the world. 1. The nervous and 2. Liars.

He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.

It is a point that I repeat over and over again in teaching public speaking. It is not so much what you say as it is the tone and manner in which you say it that makes a lasting impression.

What we say is important for in most cases the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

An effective speaker knows that the success or failure of his talk is not for him to decide - it will be decided in the minds and hearts of his hearers.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

I got on stage and I went, "Oh wow. No stage fright." I couldn't do public speaking, and I couldn't play the piano in front of people, but I could act. I found that being on stage, I felt, "This is home." I felt an immediate right thing, and the exchange between the audience and the actors on stage was so fulfilling. I just went, "That is the conversation I want to have."

We don’t ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well.

I think I always enjoyed the energy of a crowd, of being onstage. It started when I was even younger doing public speaking at school and just kept going from there.

The people are to be taken in very small doses.

Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it. If this requires public speaking or networking or other activities that make you uncomfortable, do them anyway. But accept that they're difficult, get the training you need to make them easier, and reward yourself when you're done.

It's much easier to be convincing if you care about your topic. Figure out what's important to you about your message and speak from the heart.

No one ever complains about a speech being too short!

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

Some introverts are perfectly comfortable with public speaking; I'm not one of them.

More men feel comfortable doing "public speaking," while more women feel comfortable doing "private" speaking.

You cannot be afraid to present yourself. And sometimes that takes practice. If you're not comfortable with public speaking - and nobody starts out comfortable, you have to learn how to be comfortable - practice. I cannot overstate the importance of practicing. Get some close friends or family members to help evaluate you, or somebody at work that you trust.

Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses.

All you need is something to say, and a burning desire to say it... it doesn't matter where your hands are.

I don't do much public speaking. I did a lot of stuff for Bones, and then ended up having said yes to a lot of things that kept me on the road for a while for that, but then I pretty much stopped. I'm touring for this book, but when the tour is done, that'll be the end of it.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

The easiest way to stay awake during an after-dinner speech is to deliver it.

Every speaker has a mouth; An arrangement rather neat. Sometimes it's filled with wisdom. Sometimes it's filled with feet.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.

Powerful new drug-free treatments have been developed for depression and for every conceivable type of anxiety, such as chronic worrying, shyness, public speaking anxiety, test anxiety, phobias, and panic attacks. The goal of the treatment is not just partial improvement but full recovery.

The smaller trips are useful in between the big trips: they help me gain new skills and experiences, they solve a perpetual case of cabin fever, and they are accommodating to an ambitious public speaking schedule and to some private guiding.

Beware of the conversationalist who adds "In other words."

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

It's a sick thing, right: people are afraid of public speaking. I do public speaking, except my public speaking involves the audience only having one type of emotion and one type of reaction. If they have anything other than laughter, it's a failure. That's an absurd thing for a human to try to seek. The main thing to realize is that whatever I say, it's my truth and I believe in it, and if I don't get a laugh off that, then it's not working.