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

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

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

Noonan, Peggy

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

Tiberius

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Sir William Osler

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

Walter Bagehot

10.

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

Mann, Thomas

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.

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

13.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

14.

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

15.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

16.

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

Cruise, Tom

17.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

William Shakespeare

21.

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

Publilius Syrus

22.

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

Demosthenes

23.

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

Hubbard, Kin

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Moralia

27.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

28.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

29.

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

30.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

31.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Proverb, Arabian

36.

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

37.

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

Mark Twain

38.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

39.

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

William Shakespeare

40.

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

41.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

42.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

43.

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

44.

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

Raphael, Frederic

45.

A long tongue shortens life.

46.

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

47.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Hesse, Hermann

48.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

49.

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

50.

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