Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Walter Bagehot

Best Quotes about Speech

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

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

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

Thomas Carlyle

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

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

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

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

William Shakespeare

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

Benjamin Disraeli

10.

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

11.

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

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.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Seneca

17.

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

18.

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

Mark Twain

19.

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

Proverb, Arabian

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

23.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

24.

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

William Shakespeare

25.

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

Syrus, Publilius

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

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

Hubbard, Kin

28.

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.

29.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

William Shakespeare

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Sir William Osler

37.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

38.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

39.

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