Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- William Shakespeare

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Sir William Osler

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

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

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

Arendt, Hannah

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

Chuang-tzu

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.

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

10.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

11.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

12.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

13.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

14.

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

Cioran, E. M.

15.

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

William Shakespeare

16.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

17.

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

William Shakespeare

18.

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

19.

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

Mann, Thomas

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

23.

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

Thomas Carlyle

24.

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

Moralia

25.

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

26.

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

Cruise, Tom

27.

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

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.

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

30.

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

Walter Bagehot

31.

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

Sophocles

32.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

37.

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

38.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

39.

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

Mark Twain

40.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

41.

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

42.

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

Hubbard, Kin

43.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

46.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

47.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

48.

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

49.

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

Noonan, Peggy

50.

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