Motivational Quotes

Speech

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

- Bismarck, Otto Von

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Thomas Carlyle

A long tongue shortens life.

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

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

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

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

10.

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

Noonan, Peggy

11.

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

12.

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

Sir William Osler

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

16.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

17.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

18.

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

19.

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

Cioran, E. M.

20.

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

Walter Bagehot

21.

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

Cato The Elder

22.

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

Demosthenes

23.

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

Sophocles

24.

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

Seneca

25.

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

26.

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

Proverb, Arabian

27.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

28.

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

29.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

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.

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.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

36.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

37.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

38.

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

Tiberius

39.

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

Hubbard, Kin

40.

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

41.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

42.

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

Mark Twain

43.

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

44.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

45.

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

Mann, Thomas

46.

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

William Shakespeare

47.

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

Raphael, Frederic

48.

Though thou speak'st truth, methink thou speak'st not well.

William Shakespeare

49.

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

50.

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

Benjamin Disraeli