Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

Hesse, Hermann

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 the gift of all, but the thought of few.

Cato The Elder

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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

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

Sophocles

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

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

13.

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

14.

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

Sir William Osler

15.

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

Raphael, Frederic

16.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

17.

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

Arendt, Hannah

18.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

19.

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

William Shakespeare

20.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

21.

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

Moralia

22.

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

William Shakespeare

23.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

24.

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

Syrus, Publilius

25.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

26.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Demosthenes

31.

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

32.

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

Seneca

33.

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

Cruise, Tom

34.

A long tongue shortens life.

35.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

36.

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

37.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

38.

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

Chuang-tzu

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

42.

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

43.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

44.

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

William Shakespeare

45.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

46.

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

47.

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

Noonan, Peggy

48.

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

Cioran, E. M.

49.

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

50.

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

Tiberius