Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

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.

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

Sophocles

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.

Chuang-tzu

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

Cioran, E. M.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

10.

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

William Shakespeare

11.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Thomas Carlyle

12.

Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.

Simmons, Charles

13.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

14.

A long tongue shortens life.

15.

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

16.

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

Moralia

17.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

22.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

23.

They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.

Colton, Charles Caleb

24.

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

Sir William Osler

25.

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

26.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

27.

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

28.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

29.

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

Raphael, Frederic

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Demosthenes

33.

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

Seneca

34.

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

35.

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

Arendt, Hannah

36.

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

William Shakespeare

37.

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

38.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

39.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

40.

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

Mann, Thomas

41.

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

Mark Twain

42.

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.

Paz, Octavio

43.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

44.

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

William Shakespeare

45.

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

Proverb, Arabian

46.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

47.

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

Syrus, Publilius

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly --because if they don't speak fast nobody will listen to them.

Caine, Michael