Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

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

Syrus, Publilius

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

Mann, Thomas

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

Noonan, Peggy

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

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

Chuang-tzu

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

William Shakespeare

10.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

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

Walter Bagehot

13.

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

14.

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

Moralia

15.

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

Tiberius

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

19.

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.

20.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

21.

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.

22.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

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.

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

Raphael, Frederic

25.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

26.

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

Seneca

27.

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

Arendt, Hannah

28.

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

29.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

30.

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

31.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

32.

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

33.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

34.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

35.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

36.

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

Hesse, Hermann

37.

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

38.

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

Thomas Carlyle

39.

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

Demosthenes

40.

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

41.

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

Proverb, Arabian

42.

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

Sir William Osler

43.

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

Sophocles

44.

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

Cioran, E. M.

45.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

46.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

47.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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