Famous quotes containing the word speeches:
“I don’t have to pound on that thick skull of yours and make big speeches as to what this mission means to us. I think you know. If you do good, it means the lives of several thousand men, so do good.”
—Alvah Bessie, Ranald MacDougall, Lester Cole, and Raoul Walsh. Col. Carter, Objective Burma, giving a subaltern a mission (1945)
“Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren’t a little flower somebody sewed on.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)
“It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept a man’s tongue oiled without any expense; and that, as that useful member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of handsome speeches and eulogistic expressions”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)