Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Raphael, Frederic

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

Seneca

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

William Shakespeare

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

Walter Bagehot

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

12.

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

13.

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

Noonan, Peggy

14.

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

Chuang-tzu

15.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

16.

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

17.

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

Mark Twain

18.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

19.

A long tongue shortens life.

20.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Hubbard, Kin

26.

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

27.

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

William Shakespeare

28.

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

Proverb, Arabian

29.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

30.

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

Demosthenes

31.

Speech is the gift of all, but the thought of few.

Cato The Elder

32.

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

Moralia

33.

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

34.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

35.

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

William Shakespeare

36.

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

37.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

Arendt, Hannah

42.

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

43.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

44.

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

Sir William Osler

45.

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

46.

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

Thomas Carlyle

47.

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

Raphael, Frederic

48.

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

49.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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