Daily Inspiration Quote by David Hare

The line insists that persuasion is a contest of energies: technique, logic, and ornament may impress, but what moves an audience is the speaker’s will made audible. Will here is not mere stubbornness. It is clarified intention, the felt pressure of purpose that gathers argument, cadence, and gesture into one directional force. Oratory is not just communication; it is an attempt to make something happen in the listener. For that, the speaker’s inner commitment must take precedence over polish.

Classical rhetoricians understood this when they elevated actio, the delivery of speech, as decisive. Delivery matters because it is where will becomes visible: breath and pace, emphasis and silence, the courage to inhabit a claim. Even an impeccable chain of reasoning can fail if it lacks a center of resolve. Conversely, imperfect logic can carry people if they sense moral conviction and urgency. Ethos and pathos emerge from will: the audience does not only weigh arguments; it tests the speaker’s character and intention.

As a dramatist of public life, Hare is alive to the difference between written thought and spoken persuasion. Theatre and politics alike depend on the transformation of private conviction into public force. A speech must be engineered, but it must also be animated. When the will predominate, structure becomes a servant, rhetoric a conduit, and the speech acquires momentum.

There is a warning implied. If will drives persuasion, then the ethics of will matter. A disordered or manipulative will can harness the same techniques to destructive ends. The remedy is not to downgrade will, but to discipline it with truth and responsibility, so that energy serves understanding rather than eclipsing it.

The practical counsel is simple: find the core intention, own it fully, and let every element of speech take its cue from that commitment. Words persuade when they are the audible shape of a determined purpose. In oratory, willing precedes wording.