Motivational Quotes

Speech

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

- Seneca

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Hesse, Hermann

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Noonan, Peggy

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

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

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

William Shakespeare

10.

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

11.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

12.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

13.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Sir William Osler

17.

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

18.

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

William Shakespeare

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Walter Bagehot

24.

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

Thomas Carlyle

25.

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

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.

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.

28.

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

Tiberius

29.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

30.

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

31.

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

Arendt, Hannah

32.

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

Cruise, Tom

33.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

36.

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

Syrus, Publilius

37.

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

38.

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

Mark Twain

39.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

40.

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

Demosthenes

41.

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

42.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Proverb, Arabian

46.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

47.

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

Seneca