Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Jefferson, Thomas

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Walter Bagehot

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

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

Hansell B. Duckett

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

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

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

A long tongue shortens life.

10.

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

Raphael, Frederic

11.

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

Arendt, Hannah

12.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

13.

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

Syrus, Publilius

14.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Hubbard, Kin

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

21.

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

22.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Seneca

27.

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

28.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

29.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

30.

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

Demosthenes

31.

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

Thomas Carlyle

32.

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

Proverb, Arabian

33.

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

34.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

35.

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

Cruise, Tom

36.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

37.

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.

38.

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

William Shakespeare

39.

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

40.

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

Moralia

41.

I do know of these that... only are reputed wise for saying nothing.

William Shakespeare

42.

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

Sophocles

43.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

44.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

45.

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

Cioran, E. M.

46.

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

Mark Twain

47.

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

Cato The Elder

48.

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

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.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare