The politician is much nearer in type to the barrister and advocate than to the scientist...The advocate and the politician are more interested in persuasion than in proof. They have a client or a policy to defend. The political audience is not dishonest in itself, nor does it desire or approve dishonesty or misrepresentation in others, but it is an audience only imperfectly prepared to follow a close argument, and the speaker wishes to make a favourable impression, to secure support for a policy. It is easy to see how this may lead to the depreciation of the verbal currency and to the circulation of promises which cannot be cashed.

Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.

For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers. The speeches in our time are more careful and elaborate, because they are meant to be read, and not to be heard. And exactly because they are more careful and elaborate, they are not so likely to be worthy of a careful and elaborate report. They are not interesting enough. So the moral cowardice of modern politicians has, after all, some punishment attached to it by the silent anger of heaven. Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.

The more it matters who said it, the less it actually matters.

To say more is to say less.

No one can blather on like a holy man with a trapped audience. Well, maybe a politician.

You do not keep the audience's interest by giving it information, but by withholding information ....

Success depends on three things: who says it, what he says, how he says it; and of these three things, what he says is the least important.

Many people hardly ever see a politician as a person anymore. Instead, a politician is a shadow they watch on television, not knowing whether he is speaking impromptu or reading a text written for him by anonymous advisers or experts from a screen hidden behind the cameras. Citizens no longer perceive their politician as a living human being, for they never have and will never see him that way. They see only his image, created for them by TV, radio and newspaper commentators.

From Bill Clinton?.. E-e-e-erm... Be simpler and speak in accessible... in accessible language of the pe... peop... in accessible language... of the people. Because numerous politicians try to speak in such pher... terminology and in so outlandish terms that... you can listen [them] for an hour, and then... erm, ask him what you've understood from all of what he said, and that guy won't be able to tell anything. <small>(During an interview with Ksenia Sobchak)</small>

A speech is entertaining only when serenely detached from all information.

A politician who reads aloud speeches written by others is an actor, not a leader.

It is not what you are telling people, it is how you are saying it.

You do not keep the audience’s interest by giving it information, but by withholding information,