Motivational Quotes

Speech

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

- Jean Baptiste Rousseau

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Moralia

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

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

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

Arendt, Hannah

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

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

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

Syrus, Publilius

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

William Shakespeare

10.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Seneca

16.

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.

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

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

Raphael, Frederic

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

22.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

23.

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

24.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

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.

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

27.

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

28.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

29.

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

Sir William Osler

30.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

31.

A long tongue shortens life.

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.

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

Tiberius

35.

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

36.

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

37.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

38.

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

Proverb, Arabian

39.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

40.

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

Noonan, Peggy

41.

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

42.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

43.

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

William Shakespeare

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

William Shakespeare

48.

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

William Shakespeare

49.

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

50.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North