Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Benjamin Disraeli

Best Quotes about Speech

Speech is civilization itself. The word... preserves contact -- it is silence which isolates.

Mann, Thomas

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

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

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

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

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

Walter Bagehot

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

18.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

19.

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

Noonan, Peggy

20.

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

Syrus, Publilius

21.

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

Seneca

22.

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

William Shakespeare

23.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

24.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

25.

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

26.

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

William Shakespeare

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.

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.

29.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

30.

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

31.

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

William Shakespeare

32.

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

Cruise, Tom

33.

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

34.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

35.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

36.

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

37.

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

Publilius Syrus

38.

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

Cato The Elder

39.

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

Sophocles

40.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

41.

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

William Shakespeare

42.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

43.

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

44.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

45.

A long tongue shortens life.

46.

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

47.

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

Moralia

48.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

49.

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

Demosthenes

50.

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