"When in doubt tell the truth." - Mark Twain

"To get at the thing without gestures is to get at it as idea." - Wallace Stevens ("So-and-So Reclining on Her Couch")

"Perhaps the secret of talking is to have something to say." - Walker Percy

"The easiest way to stay awake during an after-dinner speech is to give it." - Anonymous

"What is the short meaning of the long speech?" - Johann von Schiller (from Die Piccolomini)

"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), cultural historian and communications theorist

"Now the only thing standing between you and a degree is, well, me. And 18 minutes." - S. Frederic Star, author, at Wooster College Graduation, 1995

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know." - Mark Twain

"If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory." - Benjamin Disraeli

"Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones." - Charles Caleb Colton

"I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it." - Lord Barbazon (from quotations compiled by John Hewitt)

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the towncrier spoke my lines." - William Shakespeare (from Hamlet)

"I will be brief. Not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the world's shortest speech. He said 'I will be so brief I have already finished,' and he sat down. - Edward O. Wilson, biologist, at Penn State University Graduation, 1995

"Take a breath, Al--inhale." - Vice President Dan Quayle politely cutting off Senator Al Gore during the VP Debate in Atlanta, 10/13/92

"Some people will believe anything if it's whispered to them." - Anonymous

"Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech." - Paul the Apostle (from "Second Epistle to the Corinthians")

"Don't be so humble, you're not that great." - Golda Meir

"The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment you're born and doesn't stop until you stand up to speak in public." - Anonymous

"For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, / Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, / To stir men's blood: I only speak right on." - William Shakespeare (from Julius Caesar)

"Speeches are like babies; easy to conceive but hard to deliver." - from Larry Wilde's Treasury of Laughter (taken from "The Executive Speaker")