Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Hesse, Hermann

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

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Proverb, Arabian

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

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

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

10.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

11.

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

Hubbard, Kin

12.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

13.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Walter Bagehot

19.

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

Syrus, Publilius

20.

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

Cioran, E. M.

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

24.

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.

25.

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

Seneca

26.

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

27.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

28.

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

Mark Twain

29.

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

Demosthenes

30.

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

Chuang-tzu

31.

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

Tiberius

32.

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

33.

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

William Shakespeare

34.

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

Sir William Osler

35.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

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

Cruise, Tom

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Noonan, Peggy

43.

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

Thomas Carlyle

44.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

45.

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

46.

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

William Shakespeare

47.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

48.

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

Sophocles

49.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

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