Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Whitehead, Alfred North

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Cruise, Tom

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

Mann, Thomas

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

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Cioran, E. M.

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

Chuang-tzu

10.

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

Sir William Osler

11.

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

12.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

13.

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

Hubbard, Kin

14.

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

15.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

16.

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

Noonan, Peggy

17.

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

18.

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

Thomas Carlyle

19.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

20.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

22.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

23.

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

24.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Tiberius

30.

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

31.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

32.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

33.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Publilius Syrus

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Demosthenes

41.

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

William Shakespeare

42.

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

43.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

44.

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

William Shakespeare

45.

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

46.

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

47.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

48.

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

Cato The Elder

49.

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

50.

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

Sophocles