Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Moralia

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Chuang-tzu

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

Hansell B. Duckett

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

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

Thomas Carlyle

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Syrus, Publilius

13.

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

William Shakespeare

14.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

15.

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.

16.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

17.

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

Proverb, Arabian

18.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

19.

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

20.

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

Moralia

21.

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

Cioran, E. M.

22.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

William Shakespeare

27.

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

Walter Bagehot

28.

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

William Shakespeare

29.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

33.

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

34.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

35.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

39.

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

40.

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

Sophocles

41.

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

42.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

43.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

44.

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

45.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

46.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

47.

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

48.

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.