Motivational Quotes

Speech

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

- William Shakespeare

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Hubbard, Kin

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

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

Demosthenes

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

Walter Bagehot

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

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

A long tongue shortens life.

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

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

Moralia

10.

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

11.

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

Publilius Syrus

12.

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

William Shakespeare

13.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

14.

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

Noonan, Peggy

15.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

16.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

17.

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

William Shakespeare

18.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

19.

The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. [Ecclesiasticus 28:17 --18]

Bible

20.

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

21.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

22.

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

Raphael, Frederic

23.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

24.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Chuang-tzu

35.

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

Cato The Elder

36.

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

37.

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

Cruise, Tom

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Mark Twain

41.

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

William Shakespeare

42.

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

Proverb, Arabian

43.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

44.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

45.

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

46.

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

Sophocles

47.

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.

48.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

49.

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

50.

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

William Shakespeare