Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- William Shakespeare

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

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

Proverb, Arabian

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

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.

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.

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

Cruise, Tom

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

A long tongue shortens life.

10.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

11.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

12.

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

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.

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

16.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

17.

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

William Shakespeare

18.

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

Sophocles

19.

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

20.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

21.

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

Cato The Elder

22.

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

Tiberius

23.

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

24.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

25.

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

26.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

27.

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

28.

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

Seneca

29.

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

Cioran, E. M.

30.

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

Mann, Thomas

31.

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

32.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

33.

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

William Shakespeare

34.

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

Publilius Syrus

35.

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

Raphael, Frederic

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.

Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.

Arendt, Hannah

38.

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

39.

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

Moralia

40.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

41.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

42.

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

Demosthenes

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.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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