"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."
— Winston Churchill
Ah Mr. Churchill! He created resonance with the audience, knowing that most find speeches difficult, intrigued them with the mention of two things, and used wonderful "rhetoric" with his phrases that repeated structure and image. What a speaker!
"Though no on can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."
Carl Bard
What is your brand new ending? And when will you start making it... or have you already started?
"Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it."
William Feather
"Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognised a problem and turned it into an opportunity."
Joseph Sugarman
"..... understanding and communicating the essence of things is difficult,
takes a lot of thought, and has a big impact.”
— Carly Fiorina
Fiorina served as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard
from 1999 to 2005 and previously was an executive at AT&T
Image: "CarlyFiorina49416" by Antônio Milena/AB - Agência Brasil [1]. Licensed under CC-BY-3.0-br via Wikimedia Commons.
"If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then you are an excellent leader."
Dolly Parton
"Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain.
The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?"
Mary Manin Morrissey
Original image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/truk/3558806/
Nothing is lost upon a man who is bent upon growth; nothing wasted on one who is always preparing for... life by keeping eyes, mind and heart open to nature, men, books, experience.... What he gathers serves him at unexpected moments in unforeseen ways."
-- Hamilton Wright Mabie
All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Does this seem such a truism?
Are great speakers born or made?
Do people think they will be great speakers to begin with?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Why do you think Ralph Waldo Emerson actually wrote this set of words?
Incidentally they come from this passage from “The Conduct of Life” published in 1860.
Practice is nine tenths. A course of mobs is good practice for orators. All the great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping it through England for seven years, made Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it through New England for twice seven, trained Wendell Phillips. The way to learn German, is, to read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you know every word and particle in them, and can pronounce and repeat them by heart.