Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Demosthenes

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

Moralia

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

Proverb, Arabian

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

Arendt, Hannah

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

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

Hesse, Hermann

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

Noonan, Peggy

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.

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

Hubbard, Kin

10.

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

11.

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

William Shakespeare

12.

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

13.

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

Sir William Osler

14.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

15.

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

Cato The Elder

16.

Fallaci, Oriana

17.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

18.

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

William Shakespeare

19.

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

20.

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

Chuang-tzu

21.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Tiberius

25.

Sweet Benjamin, since thou art young, and hast not yet the use of tongue, make it thy slave, while thou art free; Imprison it, lest it do thee.

Hoskins, John

26.

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

Maugham, W. Somerset

27.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

28.

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

Seneca

29.

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

30.

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

William Shakespeare

31.

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

32.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

33.

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

Mark Twain

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

37.

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

38.

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

William Shakespeare

39.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

40.

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

41.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

42.

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

43.

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

44.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

45.

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

Cruise, Tom

46.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

47.

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

48.

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

Publilius Syrus

49.

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

50.

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

Syrus, Publilius