“Do you have any tips for better presentations?”

We are often asked for a few tips on putting presentations and talks together.

To complement the various guides I have written and courses I run, I have assembled this collection of quotations which get across the advice that most people require for effective presentations.

1. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Peter F Drucker

2. “If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.” David Belasco

3. “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” Charles Mingus

4. “For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.” Arthur Schopenhauer

5. “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”   Thomas Jefferson

6. “Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.   Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all.” Winston Churchill

7. “The shorter and the plainer the better.” Beatrix Potter

8. “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” Mark Twain

9. “Don’t be nervous. Do just as I do. Whenever I get up to speak, I always make a point of taking a good look around the audience. Then I say to myself, ‘What a lot of silly fools.’ And then I always feel better.” Winston Churchill

10. “The more I practise the luckier I get.” Gary Player

Are there other quotations that you would recommend?

What advice do you have for reluctant speakers?