Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Hansell B. Duckett

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Raphael, Frederic

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

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

Proverb, Arabian

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

10.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

11.

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

Walter Bagehot

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Mann, Thomas

15.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

16.

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

William Shakespeare

17.

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

Syrus, Publilius

18.

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

Hesse, Hermann

19.

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

20.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

23.

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

Mark Twain

24.

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

William Shakespeare

25.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

29.

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

Hubbard, Kin

30.

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

31.

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

32.

A long tongue shortens life.

33.

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

Thomas Carlyle

34.

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

Cruise, Tom

35.

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

36.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

37.

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

38.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

39.

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

40.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

41.

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

Sir William Osler

42.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

Moralia

47.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

48.

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

49.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

50.

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

Demosthenes