The great orator always shows a dash of contempt for the opinions of his audience
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
If you have any interests you can gain a wider audience for those interests while the goldfish bowl is yours!
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
—James Thurber
And who knows? Somewhere out there in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president’s spouse. I wish him well!
—Barbara Bush (1925–2018) American First Lady
Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.
—James Maitland Stewart (1908–97) American Film Actor
You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before.
—Meryl Streep (b.1949) American Actor
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
I want people like some of you in this audience to be part of a Clinton administration, not because or in spite of your sexual orientation, but because America needs you
—Bill Clinton (b.1946) American Head of State, Lawyer, Public Speaker
A low trick I hate to stoop to is tying and untying my shoelaces. It seems to fascinate audiences probably because so many women in the audience have their shoes off, or wish they did.
—Edward Everett Horton (1886–1970) American Character Actor
The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.
—Lenny Bruce (1925–66) American Comedian, Writer, Social Critic, Satirist
In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.
—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali Poet, Polymath
A politician’s words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.
—George Will (b.1941) American Columnist, Journalist, Writer
An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark—that is critical genius.
—Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American Filmmaker
The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn’t stand the sight of the audience.
—John Cage (1912–92) American Composer
Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience 4000 critics
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Every crowd has a silver lining.
—P. T. Barnum (1810–91) American Businessperson, Entertainer
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
—Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.
—George Carlin (1937–2008) American Stand-up Comedian
My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations.
—Greil Marcus (b.1945) American Music Journalist, Cultural Critic
So far as I know, anything worth hearing is not usually uttered at seven o’clock in the morning; and if it is, it will generally be repeated at a more reasonable hour for a larger and more wakeful audience.
—Moss Hart (1904–61) American Dramatist, Director
It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
—Alan Watts (1915–73) British-American Philosopher, Author
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.
—Michael Faraday (1791–1867) British Physicist, Chemist, Experimentalist
At male strip shows, it is still the women that we watch, the audience of women and their eager faces. They are more obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don’t want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion.
—Douglas R. Hofstadter (b.1945) American Cognitive Scientist, Author
You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad – if you’re indifferent, Endsville.
—Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American Singer
If you want an audience start a fight.
—Irish Proverb
Don’t be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also
—Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American Filmmaker
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.
—Jimmy Buffett (b.1946) American Musician, Author
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
A comedian can only last ’til he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.
—Margaret Chase Smith (1897–1995) American Politician
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
—William O. Douglas (1898–1980) American Judge
The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags – they’re gonna cough.
—Barbra Streisand (b.1942) American Musician, Actor, Songwriter
Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within, going abroad only for audience, and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase to the distance and character of the ear we speak to
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more and not merely to spend our feelings.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn’t do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me – action pictures.
—Sylvester Stallone (b.1946) American Actor, Film Director, Screenwriter
I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) English Satirist, Novelist, Author