Motivational Quotes

Speech

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

- Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

Best Quotes about Speech

The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.

Connolly, Cyril

Speech is civilization itself. The word... preserves contact -- it is silence which isolates.

Mann, Thomas

Talkers are no good doers; be assur'd we come to use our hands and not our tongues.

William Shakespeare

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.

Maxims of Ptahhotep

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another.

Sophocles

Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.

Arendt, Hannah

10.

Though thou speak'st truth, methink thou speak'st not well.

William Shakespeare

11.

A talk is like a woman's dress. Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.

12.

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

Gore Vidal

13.

Why doesn't the fellow who says, I'm no speechmaker let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration?

Hubbard, Kin

14.

When you have spoken the word, it reigns over you. When it is unspoken you reign over it.

Proverb, Arabian

15.

The mind is a wonderful thing. It starts working the minute you're born and never stops working until you get up to speak in public.

Ball, Patricia Ann

16.

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, --for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it -- not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation.

Melville, Herman

17.

If you don't want to read it, see it or hear it, don't say it.

18.

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Mark Twain

19.

All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.

Demosthenes

20.

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.

Rorty, Richard

21.

Listening to someone talk isn't at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.

Fallaci, Oriana

22.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

23.

Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he.

Publilius Syrus

24.

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

Sir William Osler

25.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

26.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

27.

Never try to impress people with the profundity of your thought by the obscurity of your language. Whatever has been thoroughly thought through can be stated simply.

28.

Speech is the gift of all, but the thought of few.

Cato The Elder

29.

A long tongue shortens life.

30.

Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.

Wilder, Thornton

31.

From my earliest days I have enjoyed an attractive impediment in my speech. I have never permitted the use of the word stammer. I can't say it myself.

Campbell, Patrick

32.

For mankind, speech with a capital S is especially meaningful and committing, more than the content communicated. The outcry of the newborn and the sound of the bells are fraught with mystery more than the baby's woeful face or the venerable tower.

Goodman, Paul

33.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

34.

What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to.

Hansell B. Duckett

35.

How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

William Shakespeare

36.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

Stevenson, Robert Louis

37.

Talk is over-rated as a means of settling disputes.

Cruise, Tom

38.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

39.

I do not speak to thee in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in words only, but in woes also.

William Shakespeare

40.

I've decided to discontinue my long talks. It's because of my throat. Someone threatened to cut it.

41.

Do not fight verbosity with words: speech is given to all, intelligence to few.

Moralia

42.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

43.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

44.

Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.

Benjamin Disraeli

45.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

46.

We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

47.

The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. [Ecclesiasticus 28:17 --18]

Bible

48.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

People resent articulacy, as if articulacy were a form of vice.

Raphael, Frederic

50.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid