Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Thomas Carlyle

Best Quotes about Speech

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

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

Mark Twain

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

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

Cato The Elder

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

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.

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

William Shakespeare

11.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

12.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

13.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

14.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

15.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Publilius Syrus

19.

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.

20.

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

William Shakespeare

21.

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

Arendt, Hannah

22.

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

23.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

24.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

25.

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

Proverb, Arabian

26.

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

27.

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

Moralia

28.

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

Raphael, Frederic

29.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

33.

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

Tiberius

34.

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

Syrus, Publilius

35.

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

36.

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

William Shakespeare

37.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

38.

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

39.

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

Demosthenes

40.

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

Thomas Carlyle

41.

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

Cioran, E. M.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

45.

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

46.

A long tongue shortens life.

47.

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

48.

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

Sir William Osler

49.

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

50.

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

Hansell B. Duckett