James Howard Kunstler

History is moving the furniture around in the house of mankind just about everywhere but the U.S.A. Things have changed, except here, where people come and go through the rooms of state, and everything looks shabbier by the day, and lethargy eats away at the upholstery like an acid fog, and the walls reverberate with meaningless oratory.

American Author

Charles Horton Cooley

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory.

American Sociologist

David Harewood

My black hero is and always will be Martin Luther King, not just because of the strength of his oratory but because his vision was very much the reality that I'd come to take for granted.

English Actor

Emily Post

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

David Josiah Brewer

Who does not delight in oratory? How we gather to hear even an ordinary speaker! How often is a jury swayed and controlled by the appeals of counsel!

American Judge

Noam Chomsky

I don't have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

American Activist

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

Roman Statesman

Thomas Babington Macaulay

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.

British Poet

Seamus Heaney

Irish Poet

David Hare

English Playwright

Oratory involves speaking to groups, often persuading or informing them.

Public Speaking

Oratory is often used in situations where the speaker aims to convince others.

Persuasive Context

Good oratory can stir emotions and inspire action among listeners.

Emotionally Charged

An oratory is a sacred space intended for individual or small group prayer.

Private Worship

Oratories are often quiet places, designed for contemplation and reflection.

Quiet Reflection

Oratories are smaller than churches, providing a more personal space for worship.

Small and Intimate

 vestige of when people used to think about oratory and rhetoric in these sorts of spatial terms the phrase in the first place that's like in the first place of your memory palace I thought this was just fascinating and I got really into it and I went to a few more

Feats of memory anyone...

 but they turn big, public spaces like this, shared soundscapes, into millions of tiny, little personal sound bubbles. In this scenario, nobody's listening to anybody. We're becoming impatient. We don't want oratory anymore; we want sound bites.