Motivational Quotes

Speech

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.

Famous Inspirational Daily Quotes

Best Quotes about Speech

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

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

Moralia

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

Hansell B. Duckett

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

Syrus, Publilius

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

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.

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

Walter Bagehot

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

Demosthenes

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

William Shakespeare

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

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

12.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

13.

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

Mark Twain

14.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

15.

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

Cato The Elder

16.

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

William Shakespeare

17.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

18.

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

Hubbard, Kin

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

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.

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

24.

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

Thomas Carlyle

25.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

26.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

27.

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

28.

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

Sir William Osler

29.

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.

30.

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

Seneca

31.

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

Tiberius

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

35.

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

Publilius Syrus

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

William Shakespeare

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

47.

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

Sophocles

48.

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

49.

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