Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

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

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

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

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

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

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

W. Somerset Maugham

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

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

10.

A long tongue shortens life.

11.

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

Proverb, Arabian

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.

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

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.

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

Publilius Syrus

16.

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

Mark Twain

17.

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

Cioran, E. M.

18.

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

Arendt, Hannah

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.

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

Noonan, Peggy

21.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

22.

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

23.

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

William Shakespeare

24.

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

Cruise, Tom

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

28.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

29.

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

30.

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

Seneca

31.

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

Sir William Osler

32.

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

Hesse, Hermann

33.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

34.

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

Thomas Carlyle

35.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

36.

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

37.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

38.

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

Chuang-tzu

39.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Hubbard, Kin

43.

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

Syrus, Publilius

44.

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

Demosthenes

45.

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

William Shakespeare

46.

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

47.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

48.

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

Moralia

49.

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

50.

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