Motivational Quotes

Speech

It's a damn shame we have this immediate ticking off in the mind about how people sound. On the other hand, how many people really want to be operated upon by a surgeon who talks broad cockney?

- Aitkins, Eileen

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Proverb, Arabian

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

W. Somerset Maugham

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

Mann, Thomas

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

Barthes, Roland

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Hesse, Hermann

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

Arendt, Hannah

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

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

Be check'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech.

William Shakespeare

10.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

11.

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

12.

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

William Shakespeare

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.

Whitehead, Alfred North

16.

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

Cioran, E. M.

17.

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

William Shakespeare

18.

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

Cruise, Tom

19.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Publilius Syrus

24.

Speeches are not magic and there is no great speech without great policy.

Noonan, Peggy

25.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

26.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

27.

A long tongue shortens life.

28.

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

William Shakespeare

29.

In a free state there should be freedom of speech and thought.

Tiberius

30.

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

Mark Twain

31.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

32.

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

33.

Speech is the mirror of the mind. (Imago Animi Sermo Est)

Seneca

34.

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency.

Walter Bagehot

35.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

36.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

41.

Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. [Colossians 4:6]

Bible

42.

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

Cato The Elder

43.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

44.

It's better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you're stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

Belson, Rami

45.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

46.

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

47.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

49.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

50.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.