For bring me a man as accomplished, as clear and acute in thinking, and as ready in delivery as you please; if, for all that, he is a stranger to social intercourse, precedent, tradition, and the manners and disposition of his fellow-countrymen, those commonplaces from which proofs are derived will avail him but little. I must have talent which has been cultivated, soil, as it were, not of a single ploughing, but both broken and given a second ploughing so as to be capable of bearing better and more abundant produce. And the cultivation is practice, listening, reading and written composition.
Nam si tu mihi quamvis eruditum hominem adduxeris, quamvis acrem et acutum in cogitando, quamvis ad pronuntiandum expeditum, si erit idem in consuetudine civitatis, in exemplis, in institutis, in moribus ac voluntatibus civium suorum hospes, non multum ei loci proderunt illi, ex quibus argumenta promuntur. Subacto mihi ingenio opus est, ut agro non semel arato, sed et novato et iterato, quo meliores fetus possit et grandiores edere. Subactio autem est usus, auditio, lectio, litterae.
[my free translation] If you bring me an erudite orator, intellectually clear and sharp, and able in delivery; his arguments will be of little avail to him if he's not familiar with the traditions, examples, institutions, morals, and tastes of his countrymen...
Cicero De Oratore, II, 131 (p. 293)
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