Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

Sophocles

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

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

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

William Shakespeare

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

Moralia

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

Proverb, Arabian

10.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

11.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

12.

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

13.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

14.

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

Raphael, Frederic

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.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Sir William Osler

19.

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

20.

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

Cruise, Tom

21.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

22.

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

23.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

24.

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.

25.

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

Arendt, Hannah

26.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

27.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

28.

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

Walter Bagehot

29.

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

William Shakespeare

30.

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

31.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

32.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

33.

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

Chuang-tzu

34.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

35.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

36.

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

Hubbard, Kin

37.

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

38.

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

Mann, Thomas

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Tiberius

42.

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

43.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

44.

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

Thomas Carlyle

45.

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

46.

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

William Shakespeare

47.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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