Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Raphael, Frederic

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

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

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

Chuang-tzu

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

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

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

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

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.

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

Seneca

11.

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

Demosthenes

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

William Shakespeare

15.

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

16.

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

Cato The Elder

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.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

19.

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

20.

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

William Shakespeare

21.

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

Noonan, Peggy

22.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

23.

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

Moralia

24.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

25.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Syrus, Publilius

29.

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

30.

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

Mark Twain

31.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

32.

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

Walter Bagehot

33.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

34.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

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.

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

40.

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

Tiberius

41.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

42.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

43.

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

Publilius Syrus

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

47.

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

48.

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

William Shakespeare

49.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

50.

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