Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Cato The Elder

Best Quotes about Speech

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

Cruise, Tom

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

Walter Bagehot

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

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

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

William Shakespeare

10.

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

Mann, Thomas

11.

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

Cioran, E. M.

12.

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.

13.

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

Sir William Osler

14.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

15.

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

William Shakespeare

16.

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

Raphael, Frederic

17.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

18.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

19.

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

20.

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

21.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

William Shakespeare

26.

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

27.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

28.

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

29.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

30.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

31.

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

Tiberius

32.

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

Thomas Carlyle

33.

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

Syrus, Publilius

34.

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

Arendt, Hannah

35.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

36.

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

37.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

38.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

39.

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

Cato The Elder

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Mark Twain

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Moralia

49.

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

Sophocles

50.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare