Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.
Speaker
No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are.
In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
We worry about appearing awkward in a presentation. But up to a point, most people seem to feel more comfortable with less-than-perfect speaking abilities. It makes the speaker more human – and more vulnerable, meaning he is less likely to attack our decisions or beliefs.
I have been in America only once since Mr. Clinton became your president – as a speaker at the United Nations.
A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail… Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.
The decision for me was whether to have ‘The Father’ be a book that told a story – from the point of view of this speaker, the daughter – without, as in the earlier books, then having a section on something else and a section on something else.
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?
I don’t want to become a rhetorical speaker. My effectiveness is mastering all of the data and being able to respond.
The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words.