Motivational Quotes

Speech

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

- Pythagoras

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

Tiberius

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

Raphael, Frederic

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

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

Moralia

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

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

10.

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

11.

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

William Shakespeare

12.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

13.

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

Publilius Syrus

14.

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

15.

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

Proverb, Arabian

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Sir William Osler

19.

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

Walter Bagehot

20.

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

William Shakespeare

21.

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

22.

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

William Shakespeare

23.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

24.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

25.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

26.

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

27.

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

William Shakespeare

28.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

29.

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

Noonan, Peggy

30.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

31.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

32.

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

Arendt, Hannah

33.

A long tongue shortens life.

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Hubbard, Kin

39.

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

Mark Twain

40.

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

41.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

42.

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

43.

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

Hesse, Hermann

44.

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

Thomas Carlyle

45.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Cruise, Tom

49.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

50.

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

William Shakespeare