Quotes about applause
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George W. Bush photo

“Every Iraqi atrocity has confirmed the justice and the urgency of our cause. [applause] Against this enemy we will accept no outcome except complete victory.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

The East Room of the White House, March 28, 2003 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030328-6.html
2000s, 2003

Hillary Clinton photo

“MODERATOR 1: Okay. Which designers do you prefer?
SECRETARY CLINTON: What designers of clothes?
MODERATOR 1: Yes.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Would you ever ask a man that question? [Laughter, applause]
MODERATOR 1: Probably not. Probably not. [Applause]”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Townterview Hosted by KTR http://web.archive.org/web/20101204161545/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/12/152294.htm, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State. KTR Studio, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (December 2, 2010)
Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Pliny the Younger photo

“I am sensible how much nobler it is to place the reward of virtue in the silent approbation of one's own breast than in the applause of the world. Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.”
Meminimus quanto maiore animo honestatis fructus in conscientia quam in fama reponatur. Sequi enim gloria, non appeti debet.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 8, 14.
Letters, Book I

Natalie Merchant photo

“Ophelia was a circus queen
the female cannonball
projected through five flaming hoops
to wild and shocked applause…”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Ophelia (1998), Ophelia

W. S. Gilbert photo

“A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

"Unappreciated Shakespeare", Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Christmas Number, 9 December 1882.

Gustav Stresemann photo
James A. Garfield photo
Ian McEwan photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“Humor is the most honest of emotions. Applause for a speech can be insincere, but with humor, if the audience doesn't like it there's no faking it.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Leslie Berger (January 28, 1982) "A Little Night Humor", The Washington Post, C1.

Ruth Deech photo
Jello Biafra photo
John Milton photo
Boris Johnson photo
Edward R. Murrow photo
James A. Garfield photo
Charlton Heston photo
Marlon Brando photo
David Hume photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
James Macpherson photo

“All hail, Macpherson! hail to thee, Sire of Ossian! The Phantom was begotten by the suing embrace of all impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition—it travelled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin Consistence took its course through Europe, upon the breath of popular applause. […] Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of Ossian. From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the imagery was spurious. In Nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work, it is exactly the reverse; every thing (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,—yet nothing distinct. It will always be so when words are substituted for things. […] Yet, much as those pretended treasures of antiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon the literature of the Country. No succeeding writer appears to have taught from them a ray of inspiration; no author, in the least distinguished, has ventured formally to imitate them—except the boy, Chatterton, on their first appearance. […] This incapacity to amalgamate with the literature of the Island, is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

William Wordsworth, "Essay Supplementary to the Preface" http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?textsid=35963 in Poems by William Wordsworth, Vol. I (1815), pp. 363–365.
Criticism

Edgar Guest photo
Jerome David Salinger photo
Edmund Burke photo

“Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Not found in Burke's writings. It was almost certainly first published in Charles Caleb Colton's Lacon (1820), vol. 1, no. 324
Misattributed

Jay Leno photo

“Welcome back! If you're wondering where our good friend -- Kevin Eubanks couldn't be here. Kevin is on tour. He's in France right now. He called me today and he's over there and he wouldn't be back until next week. So if you're wondering where Kevin Eubanks is, he's with us in spirit certainly.
Okay. Boy, this is the hard part. I want to thank you, the audience. You folks have been just incredibly loyal. (emotionally) This is tricky. (laughs) We wouldn't be on the air without you people. Secondly, this has been the greatest 22 years of my life. (applause)
I am the luckiest guy in the world. I got to meet presidents, astronauts, movie stars, it's just been incredible. I got to work with lighting people who made me look better than I really am. I got to work with audio people who made me sound better than I really do. (voice breaking) And I got to work with producers! And writers! (choked pause) And just all kinds of talented people who make me look a lot smarter than I really am.
I'll tell you something. First year of this show, I lost my mom. Second year, I lost my dad. Then my brother died. And after that, I was pretty much out of family. And the folks here became my family. Consequently, when they went through rough times, I tried to be there for them. The last time we left the show, you might remember we had the 64 children that were born among all our staffers that married. That was a great moment.
And when people say to me, hey why don't you go to ABC? Why don't you go to FOX? Why don't you go…? I didn't know anybody over there. These are the only people I have ever known. I'm also proud to say this is a a union show. And I have never worked (applause) -- I have never worked with a more professional group of people in my life. They get paid good money and they do a good job.
And when the guys and women on this show would show me the new car they bought or the house up the street here in Burbank that one of the guys got, I felt I played a bigger role in their success as they played in mine. That was just a great feeling.
And I'm really excited for Jimmy Fallon. You know, it's fun to kind of be the old guy and sit back here and see where the next generation takes this great institution, and it really is. It's been a great institution for 60 years. I am so glad I got to be a part of it, but it really is time to go, hand it off to the next guy; it really is.
And in closing, I want to quote Johnny Carson, who was the greatest guy to ever do this job. And he said, I bid you all a heartfelt good night. Now that I brought the room down, hey, Garth, have you got anything to liven this party up? Give it a shot! Garth Brooks!”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Farewell speech, February 6, 2014
The Tonight Show

Eddie Vedder photo

“Sometimes it's hard to concentrate these days. I was thinking about the history of this building [Eventim Apollo] and the Bowie history. So I started to think about that and my mind began to wander. It's not a good…So I haven't really been talking about some things and I kind of… now it feels like it's conspicuous because I lost a really close friend of mine, somebody who…I'll say this too, I grew up as 4 boys, 4 brothers, and I lost my brother 2 years ago tragically like that in an accident and after that and losing a few other people, I'm not good at it, meaning I'm not…I have not been willing to accept the reality and that's just how I'm dealing with it (applause starts). No, no, no, no. So I want to be there for the family, be there for the community, be there for my brothers in my band, certainly the brothers in his band. But these things will take time but my friend is going to be gone forever and I will just have to…These things take time and I just want to send this out to everyone who was affected by it and they all back home and here appreciate it so deeply the support and the good thoughts of a man who was a… you know he wasn't just a friend he was someone I looked up to like my older brother. About two days after the news, I think it was the second night we were sleeping in this little cabin near the water, a place he would've loved. And all these memories started coming in about 1:30am like woke me up. Like big memories, memories I would think about all the time. Like the memories were big muscles. And then I couldn't stop the memories. And trying to sleep it was like if the neighbors had the music playing and you couldn't stop it. But then it was fine because then it got into little memories. It just kept going and going and going. And I realized how lucky I was to have hours worth of…you know if each of these memories was quick and I had hours of them. How fortunate was I?! And I didn't want to be sad, wanted to be grateful not sad. I'm still thinking about those memories and I will live with these memories in my heart and I will…love him forever.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Talking about Chris Cornell for the first time since his death during a concert in London on June 6, 2017.

“Countless hearts of gold have been betrayed.
A counterfeit coinage circulates,
Buying, not a true response,
But numb indifference beneath assumed applause.”

Mu Dan (1918–1977) Chinese poet

Performances http://chinaheritage.net/journal/objecting/ (《演出》), written in 1976

Samuel Adams photo

“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

"Loyalty and Sedition," essay published in The Advertiser (1748) http://thingsabove.freerovin.com/samadams.htm, later printed in The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams, Volume 1 (1865), by William Vincent Wells

Noam Chomsky photo
Artur Schnabel photo

“Applause is a receipt, not a note of demand.”

Artur Schnabel (1882–1951) Austrian pianist

Saturday Review of Literature September 29, 1951.
Explaining why he never played encores.

Bill Bailey photo

“Talking of white supremacist violent types, I was in America, recently… [Wild laughter and applause from audience]”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Part Troll (2004)

Carol Ann Duffy photo
Bill Bailey photo

“[responding to scattered audience applause] Ah, lovely: the ripple, the ripple there. That's nearly the Zen clap of acceptance there, wasn't it?”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Part Troll (2004)

Richard Francis Burton photo

“Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Context: Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
All other Life is living Death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel-bell.

Maimónides photo

“If met with applause … so does the disease itself become aggravated.”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

Aphorisms. Quoted in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 3 (1935), p. 555
Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 640
Context: There is one [disease] which is widespread, and from which men rarely escape. This disease varies in degree in different men … I refer to this: that every person thinks his mind … more clever and more learned than it is … I have found that this disease has attacked many an intelligent person … They … express themselves [not only] upon the science with which they are familiar, but upon other sciences about which they know nothing … If met with applause … so does the disease itself become aggravated.

“Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

A Prologue (1939) to Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768).
Context: Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play;
Laugh if you can, or failing that, give vent
In hissing fury to your discontent;
Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.

Harold Wilson photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“While the galleries were all applausive of heart, and the Fourth Estate looked with eyes enlightened, as if you had touched its lips with a staff dipped in honey,—I have sat with reflections too ghastly to be uttered.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

T.S. Eliot photo
Adi Shankara photo

“It is not possible to speak with too much applause of so excellent a work.”

Adi Shankara (788–820) Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century

Sir William Jones, quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

“Everybody loves being recognized, in any way, large or small. ... Appreciation, applause, approval, respect—we all love it!”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

17 May 2021
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

“Science wasn’t a show-business talent, conducted in large halls and decided by audience applause.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 321)

“Ladies and gentlemen, I resent this applause.”

Brother Theodore (1906–2001) German-American monologuist and comedian
Prevale photo

“A round of applause to those who are out of every scheme, to those who break the rules, dare, risk, do not adapt or settle, but stand out.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Un applauso a chi è fuori da ogni schema, a chi rompe le regole, osa, rischia, non si adatta o si accontenta, ma si distingue.
Source: prevale.net