Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Chuang-tzu

Best Quotes about Speech

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

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

Hubbard, Kin

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

Tiberius

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

William Shakespeare

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

William Shakespeare

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

Sir William Osler

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

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

Publilius Syrus

10.

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

Arendt, Hannah

11.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

12.

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

13.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

14.

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

Cruise, Tom

15.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

16.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

17.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Hesse, Hermann

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

24.

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

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.

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

27.

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

Sophocles

28.

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

29.

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

William Shakespeare

30.

Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.

Maxims of Ptahhotep

31.

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

Moralia

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

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

36.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

37.

A long tongue shortens life.

38.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

39.

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

40.

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

Seneca

41.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

42.

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

43.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

44.

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

Cato The Elder

45.

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

Cioran, E. M.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

49.

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

Raphael, Frederic

50.

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