Quotes about Audiences

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

A man appeared before an audience in which his wife was seated and when he got through he went up to her and said. "How did I do? " And she said, "You did fine, only you missed several excellent opportunities to sit down."

Watson's answer to a question about competition in his first company meeting, 1914, as the new president, of the CTR (Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company), the company that was to become IBM: ". . . the only way that we want you men to handle the competition proposition is the only way we can afford to allow you men to handle it, that is, strictly on the merits of our goods. . . . You people when you come down to competition-must not do anything that's in restraint of trade, anything that will restrain the other fellow from selling his goods, anything that could be construed by anybody as unfair competition," he said, stammering in his earnestness. "You know, gentlemen, it is bad policy to do anything unfair with anybody, anywhere at any time, isn't it, in business or outside of business? No man ever won except in the one honest, fair and square way in which you men are working." The audience burst into applause, interrupting Watson again and again as he assured them that he would uphold fairness no matter what the competition did. . . . The spirit of the meeting quickened; and Watson, for the first time, began to take command.

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.

Singers attract fans with aspects of their own personality. People feel I'm passionate and obsessive. They know this isn't a profession for me, it's a vocation. It's not an egotistical thing, but something else. I'm in a dialogue with my audience, and that's something I need

It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.

"Even though it will disappoint many of you, the evidence is that you have a very bright future." This is how I finished my presentation at American University, eliciting a few chuckles from the audience. On a more serious note, I asked the students to consider a radical proposition: Economic growth and technological progress are not enemies of the environment but are perhaps its best friends, since they allow us to reduce humanity's footprint on the natural world. High tech agriculture boosts farm productivity, which means a cheaper food supply and more land spared for nature. Better sewage treatment means that our rivers and streams can run freer of pollutants. Catalytic converters on cars and better filters on power-plant smokestacks have greatly reduced smog, smoke and soot in the air. But only rich societies can afford to pay for these. In the end, the best environmental program of all is the promotion of prosperity.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"

I see their souls, and I hold them in my hands, and because I love them they weigh nothing. [on audiences]

This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The 'true' story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

[It] was written and sold. I knew it was a strong story because I cared about it and believed in it. I had no idea that it would have the effect it had on the audience. While most people ignored it, of course, and continue to live full and happy lives without reading it or anything else by me, there was still a surprisingly large group who responded to the story with some fervency.

Those who turn against the Church do so to play to their own private gallery, but when, one day, the applause has died down and the cheering has stopped, they will face a smaller audience, the judgment bar of God.

Mother Teresa Has Anti-Abortion Answer At a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington Feb. 3, Mother Teresa of Calcutta delivered the most startling and bold proclamation of truth to power I have heard in my more than 30 professional years in Washington. Before an audience of 3,000 - that included the president and his wife, the vice president and his wife and congressional leaders, among others - the 83-year old nun, who is physically frail but spiritually and rhetorically powerful, delivered an address that cut to the heart of the social ills afflicting America. She said that America, once known for generosity to the world, has become selfish. And she said that the greatest proof of that selfishness is abortion. Tying abortion to growing violence and murder in the streets, she said, "If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other? . . . Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want." At that line, most of those in attendance erupted in a standing ovation, something that rarely occurs at these sedate events. At that moment, President Clinton quickly reached for his water glass, and Mrs. Clinton and Vice President and Mrs. Gore stared without expression at Mother Teresa. They did not applaud. It was clearly an uncomfortable moment on the dais. She then delivered the knockout punch: "Many people are very, very concerned with children in India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. "These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today - abortion, which brings people to such blindness." What? Abortion destroys peace and causes blindness toward the sick, the hungry and the naked? Abortion leads to wars between nations? Of course it does, if life is regarded so lightly and its disposal becomes so trivial, so clinical and so easy. Why should people or nations regard human life as noble or dignified if abortion flourishes? Why agonize about indiscriminate death in Bosnia when babies are being killed far more efficiently and out of the sight of television cameras? Mother Teresa delivered her address without rhetorical flourishes. She never raised her voice or pounded the lectern. Her power was in her words and the selfless life she has led. Even President Clinton, in his remarks that followed, acknowledged she was beyond criticism because of the life she has lived in service to others. At the end, she pleaded for pregnant women who don't want their children to give them to her: "I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child." She said she has placed over 3,000 children in adoptive homes from her Calcutta headquarters alone. She has answered the question, "Who will care for all of these babies if abortion is again outlawed?" Now the question is whether a woman contemplating abortion wishes to be selfish or selfless, to take life or to give life.

Our daughters and sons have burst from the marionette show leaving a tangle of strings and gone into the unlit audience.

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience of 4000 critics.

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.

The truly educated man will always speak to the understanding of the most unlearned of his audience.

Demoralization of the target audience is yet another step in successful mind control.

Confusing a targeted audience is one of the necessary ingredients for effective mind control.

With grave Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care; And princely counsel in his face yet shone, Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood, With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look Drew audience and attention still as night Or summer's noontide air.

Still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few.

The curtain is lifting. We can have triumph, or tragedy, for we are the playwrights, the actors, and the audience.

Questions to ask yourself: Are you a good teacher? Who would know? You would. Your students. Your friends. Your God. Not a bad audience, that!

We believed - and I personally still believe - that the so called Voice of God narration, ubiquitous in documentaries destined for PBS, is insulting to the audience. If you believe in the intelligence of your audience, you don't need to tell them what to think and how to process the material they're seeing.

I don't think you should hurt or kill animals just to entertain an audience. Animals should have some rights. But there are a lot of directors, including Ingmar Bergman, who will injure animals to further a plot. I will have none of it.

If for the sake of a crowded audience you do wish to hold a lecture, your ambition is no laudable one, and at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.