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“In almost any subject, your passion for the subject will save you. If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. If you wish to be good, you will be good. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich. If you wish to be learned, you will be learned. Only then you must really wish these things and wish them with exclusiveness and not wish one hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”
Try your best to develop an ability to let others look into your head and heart. Learn to make your thoughts, your ideas, clear to others, individually, in groups, in public. You will find, as you improve in your effort to do this, that you—your real self—are making an impression, an impact, on people such as you never made before.
“If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.”
“The biggest lesson I have ever learned is the stupendous importance of what we think. If I knew what you think, I would know what you are, for your thoughts make you what you are. By changing our thoughts, we can change our lives.”
The will to succeed must be a vital part of the process of becoming an effective speaker.
So, to succeed in this work, you need the qualities that are essential in any worthwhile endeavor: desire amounting to enthusiasm, persistence to wear away mountains, and the self-assurance to believe you will succeed.
The chief cause of your fear of public speaking is simply that you are unaccustomed to speak in public.
Never memorize word for word:
If we memorize our talk word for word, we will probably forget it when we face our listeners. Even if we do not forget our memorized talk, we will probably deliver it in a mechanical way. Why? Because it will not come from our hearts, but from our memories.
Assemble and Arrange Your Ideas Beforehand:
Rehearse Your Talk:
How do you fan the fires of faith in your message? By exploring all phases of your subject, grasping its deeper meanings, and asking yourself how your talk will help the audience to be better people for having listened to you.
Draw yourself up to your full height and look your audience straight in the eyes, and begin to talk as confidently as if every one of them owed you money. Imagine that they do. Imagine that they have assembled there to beg you for an extension of credit. The psychological effect on you will be beneficial.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.
A speaker should approach his preparation not by what he wants to say, but by what he wants to learn.
For better or worse, you must play your own instrument in the orchestra of life.
First, you must gather your facts. These will center around three items: the subject of the speaker’s talk, his qualifications to speak on that subject, and his name. Often a fourth item will become apparent—why the subject chosen by the speaker is of special interest to the audience.
Oratory is the highest form of music.
Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
90% of how well the talk will go is determined before the speaker steps on the platform.
Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can, with perfect certainty, count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out.
John D. Rockefeller, Sr., said that the first essential for success in business was patience and the knowledge that reward is ultimately certain.
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
The most precious things in speech are the pauses.
Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.
Psychologists tell us that more than eighty-five per cent of our knowledge comes to us through visual impressions.
If you can’t write your message in a sentence, you can’t say it in an hour.
Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.
If a speaker believes a thing earnestly enough and says it earnestly enough, he will get adherents to his cause,
If you don’t know what you want to achieve in your presentation your audience never will.
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.
Every new life is a new thing under the sun; there has never been anything just like it before, and never will be again. A young man ought to get that idea about himself; he should look for the single spark of individuality that makes him different from other folks, and develop that for all he is worth.
Please, I beg you, do not attempt to force yourself in a mold and thereby lose your distinctiveness.
put your heart into your talks.
His heart was in his work, and his delivery was effective because it rested upon the genuine beauty of his own inner life. “
Best way to conquer stage fright is to know what you’re talking about.
There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
People are always interested in human interest stories, so I would have some rich man tell how he made a million in real estate.
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
No one ever complains about a speech being too short!
Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.
Applause is a receipt, not a bill.
“The best argument is that which seems merely an explanation.”
“If you come to me and say, ‘Let us sit down and take counsel together, and, if we differ from one another, understand why it is that we differ from one another, just what the points at issue are,’ we will presently find that we are not so far apart after all, that the points on which we differ are few and the points on which we agree are many, and that if we only have the patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we will get together.”
The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the listener receives.
You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.
