Love Quote by Richard Armour

A "finished speaker" sounds like a compliment until Armour twists the knife: finished as in done, used up, mercifully silent. The gag lands because it borrows the language of refinement ("finished", "polished") and then swaps in the more terminal meaning of the word, exposing how often our praise for eloquence is really a craving for control. We say we admire speakers, but we also want them to stop speaking.

Armour's line is tuned to the mid-century American world of podiums and programs: civic luncheons, banquet toasts, PTA nights, radio sermons, the small tyrannies of public address. The poet's ear catches the social ritual where talking becomes performance and endurance sport, less about communication than about occupying the room. His "I really, truly do" is a parody of sincerity, the over-insistence that signals an impending reversal. It's also a nudge at the audience's complicity: we've all sat through the speaker who mistakes attention for affection.

The subtext is a democratic one. Public speech is supposed to be the vehicle of persuasion and shared life; Armour treats it as a form of soft coercion, the microphone as entitlement. By separating "polished" from "through", he punctures the idea that the problem is style. The real offense isn't awkwardness, it's duration, self-importance, the refusal to yield. The wit isn't just impatience; it's a small ethics of airtime.