The Art of Public Speaking (AmazonClassics)

by Dale Carnegie

We pray for love but prepare for hate. We preach peace but equip for war.

Mr. President, this is the eternal law of human nature. You may struggle against it, you may try to escape it, you may persuade yourself that your intentions are benevolent, that your yoke will be easy and your burden will be light, but it will assert itself again. Government without the consent of the governed—authority which heaven never gave—can only be supported by means which heaven never can sanction.

And let him be sure to leave other men their turns to speak. —Francis Bacon, Essay on Civil and Moral Discourse.

The first thing to remember in conversation, then, is that listening—respectful, sympathetic, alert listening—is not only due to our fellow converser but due to ourselves. Many a reply loses its point because the speaker is so much interested in what he is about to say that it is really no reply at all but merely an irritating and humiliating irrelevancy.