Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Cioran, E. M.

Best Quotes about Speech

A long tongue shortens life.

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

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

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 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

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

Tiberius

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

Publilius Syrus

10.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

11.

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

12.

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

Cruise, Tom

13.

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

Thomas Carlyle

14.

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

Moralia

15.

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

Cato The Elder

16.

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

17.

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

Sophocles

18.

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

William Shakespeare

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

22.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

23.

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

Seneca

24.

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

25.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

26.

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

27.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

28.

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

Demosthenes

29.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

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.

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

32.

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

Walter Bagehot

33.

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

34.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

35.

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

Chuang-tzu

36.

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

Syrus, Publilius

37.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

39.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

Noonan, Peggy

43.

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

44.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

45.

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

46.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

47.

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

48.

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

William Shakespeare

49.

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

William Shakespeare

50.

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