“Only connect!... Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.” - E. M. Forster
"Man can be destroyed, but not defeated" – Hemingway
"Living a life of defeat is death and a death with dignity is life."
"All happy families resemble each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." – Tolstoy
“Curiosity, happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge.”
Source: Confessions of a Public Speaker
All talks and presentations have a point of view, and you need to know what yours is. If you don’t know enough about the topic to have an opinion, solve that problem before you make your presentation. Even saying, “Here are five things I like” is a strong position, in that there are an infinite number of things you did not choose. With a weak position, your talk may become, “Here is everything I know I could cram into the time I have, but since I have no idea if you care, or what I would say if I had less time to talk, you get a half-baked, hard to follow, hard to present, pile of trash.”
Know why they are there, what their needs are, what background knowledge they have, the pet theories they believe in, and how they hope their world will be different after your lecture is over. If you don’t have time to study your subject, at least study your audience. It may turn out that as little as you know about a subject, you know more about it than your audience.
If it takes 10 minutes to explain what your point is, something is very wrong. Points are claims. Arguments are what you do to support your points. Every point should be compressed into a single, tight, interesting sentence. The arguments might be long, but no one should ever be confused as to what your point is while you are arguing it. A mediocre presentation makes the points clear but muddles or bores people with the arguments. A truly bad presentation never clarifies what the points are.
If you do not know the intelligent counterarguments to each of your points, your points cannot be good. For example, if your presentation is about why people should eat more cheese, you should at a minimum know why the Anti-Cheese Foundation of America says people should eat less cheese.
"I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true Originality" - Conan O'Brien
A zen student came to Bankei and said: 'Master, I have an ungovernable temper -- how can i cure it?' Show me this temper, said Bankei, 'it sounds fascinating.' 'I haven't got it right now,' said the student, 'so I can't show it to you.' 'well then,' said Bankei, 'Bring it to me when you have it.' 'but I can't bring it just when I happen to have it,' protested the student. 'it arises unexpectedly, and I would surely lose it before I got it to you.'
In that case, said Bankei, 'it cannot be part of your true nature. if it were, you could show it to me at any time. when you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you -- so it must come into you from the outside. I suggest that whenever it gets into you, you beat yourself with a stick until the temper can't stand it, and runs away.