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

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

Raphael, Frederic

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

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

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

William Shakespeare

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

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

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

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

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.

10.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

11.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

12.

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

13.

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

William Shakespeare

14.

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

Sophocles

15.

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

16.

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

Hesse, Hermann

17.

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

Syrus, Publilius

18.

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

Thomas Carlyle

19.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

20.

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

21.

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

Proverb, Arabian

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.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

24.

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

Chuang-tzu

25.

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

Cruise, Tom

26.

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

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

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

Sir William Osler

29.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

30.

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

31.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

32.

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

Cato The Elder

33.

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

Publilius Syrus

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

37.

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

Moralia

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

42.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Hubbard, Kin

49.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

50.

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

Seneca