How to Develop Self Confidence & Influence People by Public Speaking

QHB's 10 Points of Focus and Summaries

How to Develop Self Confidence & Influence People by Public Speaking 10 Points:

1. Developing Courage and Self-Confidence: Public speaking anxiety often diminishes shortly after starting and the essential steps to achieve a good start to achieve courage and self confidence is desire, knowledge, confidence, and practice.

2. Self-Confidence through Preparation: Focus on one aspect of your topic and expand on it. Understand your audience’s needs and tailor your speech accordingly. Thorough preparation is crucial; it makes delivering the speech easier.

3. How Famous Speakers Prepared Their Addresses: Organize your speech: present facts, argue from them, and appeal for action. Effective speech planning includes securing attention, educating, and motivating the audience.

4. Improvement of Memory: Utilize the natural laws of remembering: impression, repetition, and association. Effective repetition involves spaced intervals rather than continuous drilling.

5. Essential Elements in Successful Speaking: Determination and the belief in your success are key to effective public speaking. Initial nervousness is normal but usually fades after starting.

6. The Secret of Good Delivery: How you say something can be more impactful than what you say. Use pauses effectively and engage your audience as if in conversation.

7. Platform Presence and Personality: Personality can be more crucial than intelligence in public speaking. Present yourself with vitality and control, and engage intimately with your audience.

8. How to Open a Talk: Arouse curiosity or use a story to capture attention. Avoid opening with humor or apologies; be concise and impactful.

9. How to Close a Talk: Effective closing strategies include summarizing, appealing for action, and using memorable quotes or stories. Aim for a strong beginning and ending, and keep them close together.

10. Making Your Meaning Clear and Interesting: Be clear, concrete, and specific in your speech. Use visual aids and stories to enhance understanding and interest Tailor your language to be easily understood by your audience.

QHB's Selected Book Quotes and Summaries

*** DC = Dale Carnegie (The Author)

=== CHAPTER ONE: Developing Courage and Self Confidence ===

# “Some people, no matter how often they speak, always experience this self-consciousness just before they commence, but in a few seconds after they have gotten on their feet, it disappears.” - DC

# “In order to get the most out of your efforts to become a good speaker in public … four things are essential: First start with a strong and persistent desire … Second know thoroughly what you are going to talk about … Third Act confident … Fourth Practice! Practice! Practice!” - DC

# “There is no other accomplishment which any man can have that will so quickly make for him a career and secure recognition as the ability to speak acceptably.” - Chauncey M. Depew

# “One thing left for them to do: to advance, to conquer. That is precisely what they did.” - DC

# “Breathe deeply for thirty seconds before out ever face your audience. The increased supply of oxygen will buoy you up and give you courage.” - DC

# “Fear is begotten of ignorance and uncertainty.” - Profressor Robinson

=== CHAPTER TWO: Self Confidence through Preperation ===

# “I believe that I shall never be old enough to speak without embarrassment when I have nothing to say.” - Abraham Lincoln

# “Take one and only one phase of your topic: expand and enlarge that.” - DC

# “While preparing, study your audience. Think of their wants, their wishes. That is sometimes half the battle.” - DC

# “I have discovered that in most of them has been failure to realize the importance of knowing everything possible about their products and getting such knowledge before they start to sell.” - Arthur Dunn

# “A well-prepared speech is already nine-tenths delivered.” - DC

# “Do not sit down and try to manufacture a speech in 30 minutes. A speech can’t be cooked to order like a steak. A speech must grow.” - DC

=== CHAPTER THREE: How Famous Speakers prepared their addresses ===

# “When a man’s knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has, the greater will be his confusion of thought.”’- Herbert Spencer

# “A speech is a voyage with a purpose, and it must be charted. The person who starts nowhere, generally gets there.” - DC

# “ … built many of his innumerable speeches on this outline: State your Facts. Argue from them. Appeal for action.” - DC

# “Many people have found this plan very helpful and stimulating: show something that is wrong. Show how to remedy it. Ask for cooperation.” - DC

# “ … Speech Plan: Secure interested attention. Win confidence. State your facts; educate people regarding the merits of your proposition. Appeal to the motive that make men act.” - DC

# “Present the facts on both sides, and then present the conclusion that those facts make clear and definite.” - DC

# “The practice of writing out what you are going to say, will force you to think. It will clarify your ideas. It will hook them in your memory. It will reduce your mental wandering to a minimum. It will improve your diction.” - DC

# “Don’t read and don’t attempt to memorize your talk word for word. That consumes time, and courts disaster.” - DC

=== CHAPTER FOUR: The Improvement of Memory ===

# “These “natural laws of remembering” are very simple. There are only three. … Briefly, they are Impression, Repitition and Association.” - DC

# “One intense hour will do more than dreamy years.” - Henry Ward

# “If there is anyone thing that I have learned which is more important than anything else, and which I practice everyday under any and all circumstances, it is concentration in the particular job I have in hand.” - Eugene Grace

# “One time seeing is worth a thousand hearing.” - Chinese Proverb

# “We can memorize anything within reason if we repeat it often enough. But bear these facts in mind as you repeat: Do not sit down and repeat a thing over and over until you have it engraved on your memory. Go over it once or twice, then drop it; come back later and go over it again.” - DC

# “The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into the most synthetic relation with each other, will be the one with the best memory.” - Professor Jame

=== CHAPTER FIVE: Essential Elements in Successful Speaking ===

# “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. … Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” - Abraham Lincoln

# “It is easily in your power to do this. Believe that you will succeed. Believe it firmly and you will then do what is necessary to bring success about.” - DC

# “You may never be able to speak without some nervous anxiety just before you begin. But, if you will persevere, you will soon eradicate everything but this initial fear; and after you have spoken for a few seconds, that too will disappear.” - DC

=== CHAPTER SIX: The Secret of Good Delivery ===

# “Art begins where the tiny bit begins.” - Brullof

# “I have often noticed in college contest that it is not always the speaker with the best material who wins. Rather, it is the speaker who can talk so well that his material sounds best.” - DC

# “It is not so much what you say as how you say it.” - DC

# “Three things matter in a speech, who says it, how he says it, and what he says - and, of the three, the last matters the least.” - Lord Morleg

# “Douglas seldom used a smile. Lincoln consistently argued by apology and illustration. Douglas was haughty and overbearing, Lincoln was humble and forgiving. Douglas thought in quick flashes. Lincoln’s mental processor were much slower.” - DC

# “Stress important words, subordinate unimportant ones.” - DC

# “The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.” - Herbert Spencer

# “Lincoln often paused in his speaking. … This sudden silence had the same effect as a sudden noise: it attracted notice.” - DC

# “Talk to your hearers just as if you expected them to stand up in a moment and talk back to you. … It will warm and humanize your manner of talking.” - DC

=== CHAPTER SEVEN: Platform Presence and Personality ===

# “Personality contributes more to business success than docs superior intelligence.” - DC

# “He talks with more life and spirit. He radiates vitality and animation; they always challenge attention.” - DC

# “When they had the look of success they found it easier to think success, to achieve success. Such is the effect of clothes on the wearer himself.” - DC

# “Get an intimate contact. Make the thing conversational.” - DC

# “The most important thing in public speaking is the man.” - Henry Ward Beecher

# “We just said, a few pages previously, not to play with your clothes or your jewelry because it attracted attention. There is another reason also. It gives an impression of weakness, a lack of self control. … So stand still and control yourself physically and that will give you an impression of mental control.” - DC

# “If we are interested in our audience there is every likelihood that our audience will be interested in us. Even before we speak, very often, we are condemned or approved.” - Professor Overstreet

=== CHAPTER EIGHT: How to Open a Talk ===

# “To foresee is to rule.” - Pascal

# “The majority of untrained and unskilled speakers will begin in one of two ways - both of which are bad … Beware of opening with a so called humorous story … do not begin with an apology.” - DC

# “So arouse your audience curiosity with your first sentence, and you have their interested attention. … One can often arouse curiosity by beginning with an effect, and making people anxious to hear the cause.” - DC

# “Every person who aspires to speak in public ought to study the technique that magazine writers employ to hook the reader’s interest immediately.” - DC

# “Why not begin with a story? … That is what hooks the attention. That kind of opening is almost foolproof. It can hardly fail. It moves. It marches. We follow. We want to know what is going to happen.” - DC

# “Even the unpracticed beginner can usually manage a successful opening if he employs the story technique and arouses our curiosity.” - DC

# “Mr Ellis’ opening has another commendable feature. It begins by asking a question, by getting the audience thinking with the speaker, co-operating with him.” - DC

# “A good magazine article is a series of shocks.” - S. S. McClure

# “Sounds natural, spontaneous, human. Sounds like one person relating an interesting story to another. An audience like that.” - DC

# “The opening of a talk is difficult. It is also highly important … it ought to be carefully worked out in advance.” - DC

# “The introduction ought to be short, only a sentence or two. Often it can be dispensed with altogether.” - DC

# “Never apologize. It is usually an insult to your audience; it bores them. Drive right into what you have to say, say it quickly and sit down.” - DC

# “A speaker may be able to win immediate attention of his audience by: Arousing curiosity. Relating a human interest story. Beginning with a specific illustration. Using an exhibit. Asking a question. Opening with a striking quotation. Showing how the topic affects the vital interest of the audience. Starting with shocking facts.” - DC

# “Don’t make your opening too formal. … Make it appear free, casual, inevitable.” - DC

=== CHAPTER NINE: How to Close a Talk ===

# “By their entrances and exit shall ye know them.” - Old Saying in theatre

# “Seven suggested ways of closing: summarizing, restating, outlining briefly the main points you have covered. Appealing for action. Paying the audience a sincere compliment. Raising a laugh. Quoting a fitting verse of poetry. Using a biblically quotation. Building up a climax.” - DC

# “Get a good ending and a good beginning; and get them close together.” - DC

=== CHAPTER TEN: How to make your meaning Clear ===

# “Every talk, regardless of whether the speaker realizes it or not, has one of four major goals. What are they? To make something clear. To impress and convince. To get action. To entertain.” - DC

# “Remember gentlemen, that any order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood.” - General Van Moltke

# “I have known Lincoln to study for hours the best of three to express an idea.” - Mentor Graham

# “One seeing is better then hundred times telling about.” - Oriental Proverb

# I hold that one cannot rely on speech alone to make himself understood or to gain and hold attention.” A dramatic supplement is needed. It is better to supplement whenever possible with picture which show the right and the wrong way; diagrams are more convincing than mere words and pictures are more convincing than diagrams.” - DC

# “You cannot make people understand a subject unless you understand the subject yourself. The more clearly you have a subject in mind, the more clearly can you present that subject to the mind of others.” - DC

# “Be concrete. Be definite. Be specific. This quality of definiteness not only makes for clearness but for impressiveness and conviction and interest also.” - DC

# “Avoid technical terms when addressing a lay audience. Follow Lincoln’s plan of putting your ideas into language plain enough for any boy or girl to comprehend.” - DC

=== CHAPTER ELEVEN: How to interest your Audience ===

# “There is nothing else anything like so interesting to ourselves as ourselves.” - DC

# “We don't want to be lectured to. No one enjoys that. Remember you must be entertaining or we will pay no attention whatever to what you are saying.” - DC

# “Almost everyone can profit by this incident. The average speech would be far appealing if it were rich and replete with human interest stories. The speaker ought to attempt to make only a few points and to illustrate them with concrete cases. Such a method of speech building can hardly fail to get and hold attention.” - DC

# “Pictures. Pictures. Pictures. They are free as the air you breathe. Sprinkle them through your talks, your conversation; and you will be more entertaining, more influential.” - DC

# “I am so excited about life that I cannot keep still. I just have to tell people about it.” - Richard Washburn Child

=== CHAPTER TWELVE: Improving your diction ===

# “The secret can be divulged in a single phrase: his command of the English language. … he spoke his mother tonged with such precision and beauty that his listeners soon forget his rusty shoes, his frayed coat, his unshaven face. His diction became an immediate passport into the best business circle.” - DC

# “We are evaluated and classified by four things: by what we do, how we look, by what we say and by how we say it.” - DC

# “I recognize but one mental acquisition as a necessary part of education of a lady or a gentleman, namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother tonged.” - Dr. Charles W. Eliot

# “It is only to get the books and to read and study them carefully. Work, work, work is the main thing.” - Abraham Lincoln

# “I once asked Kathleen Norris how style could be developed. “By reading classics of prose and poetry and by critically eliminating stock phrases and hackneyed expressions from your work.” - DC

=== END OF BOOK ===