Always be shorter than anybody dared to hope.  ~Lord Reading, on speechmakingCUL

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.  ~Dale Carnegie

Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.  ~G.B. Trudeau

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion.  Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.  ~John Kenneth Galbraith

The problem with speeches isn’t so much not knowing when to stop, as knowing when not to begin.  ~Frances Rodman

Political speeches are like steer horns.  A point here, a point there, and a lot of bull in between.  ~Alfred E. Neuman

Few speeches which have produced an electrical effect on an audience can bear the colourless photography of a printed record.  ~Archibald Philip Primrose

A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep!  A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.  ~Peggy Noonan

Liberty don’t work as good in practice as it does in speeches.  ~Will Rogers

When a sermon at length comes to an end, people rise and praise God, and they feel the same way after many other speeches.  ~John Andrew Holmes

But I… never was happy, never could make a good impromptu speech without several hours to prepare it.  ~Mark Twain, 1879 speechquoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/09/twain-speech (Thanks, Garson O’Toole of quoteinvestigator.com!)

Oratory is the power to talk people out of their sober and natural opinions.  ~Joseph ChatfieldMCTO