Quotes About Clarity

big things are best said, are almost always said, in small words.

it is harder to decide what you want to say than it is to figure out how to say it.

a speech about everything is a speech about nothing.

you can't say everything, the fact that you have to winnow your thoughts down to the essentials, means that you can get to the heart of the matter quickly.

You must be able to say the sentences you write. And so they cannot be long and serpentine things that curl around clauses, caress subclauses, encompass extended metaphor, stop briefly for a whimsical digression and culminate, ultimately, in a long and rhythmic peroration that signals to your audience that you would not take it unkindly if they, at just about this moment, would interrupt you with vigorous and sustained applause.

It is usually and paradoxically true that the more important the message, the less time required to say it.

NO SPEECH SHOULD LAST MORE THAN TWENTY MINUTES

Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em—tell 'em—then tell 'em what you told 'em.

Every speech has a job to do, and no matter who you are, pope, president, poet or pipe layer, if you're giving a speech you have to understand what its job is and work to make sure it's done.

I think that to achieve true adulthood is to understand the simplicity of things.

When you are thinking about what you want to say, it is often helpful to define it down, in your own mind, to a sentence or two.

Always reduce it down. This keeps it from having a false bigness in your mind, and allows you to get your hands around it. Another way to get a handle on what you want to say is to ask: What does this speech have to do? Every speech has a job, a reason for being.

They weren't trying to self-consciously fashion a phrase that would grab the listener. They were simply trying to capture in words the essence of the thought they wished to communicate.

The words and phrases you use must not only be "hearable" by the audience, they must be

People need to continue talking until they get enough understanding to be able to genuinely leave it behind.

To know what we think, to be masters of our own meaning, will make a solid foundation for great and weighty thought.

You are the sky. Everything else – it's just the weather.

You are the sky. Everything else—it's just the weather.

In this great age of communication, there a lot of people you can't actually understand. I know everyone tweets, and twits and texts and all that, but actually we've all got voices, and it is awfully nice to hear them and if you can understand what people are saying.

There should be an ease and clarity to anything that's real and from the heart. Things that are true shouldn't have tricks.

You trust you'll know what you need to know just when you need to know it.

Every piece of clutter you dissolve back into clear light allows your higher inner blueprint, your soul's destiny, to translate fluidly and accurately into the form of your life. The clearer you become, the easier it is to evolve along with the planet—with no snags, stuckness, or suffering. This is the act of becoming transparent.

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When I started on this I had forty-forty vision.