FUNNY QUOTES ON PUBLIC SPEAKING

"Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary."

— Evan Esar

"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

— Mark Twain

"Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either."

— Gore Vidal

"What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to."

— Hansell B. Duckett

"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

"The duty of a toastmaster is to be so dull that the succeeding speakers will appear brilliant by contrast."

— Clarence B. Kelland

"Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening."

— Dorothy Sarnoff

"Speak when you are angry—and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret."

— Laurence J. Peter

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

— Robert Orben

"Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught."

— Sydney J. Harris

"A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that 'individuality' is the key to success."

— Robert Orben

"HARANGUE, n. A speech by an opponent, who is known as an harrangue-outang."

— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them."

— H. L. Mencken