Motivational Quotes

Speech

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.

Best Quotes about Speech

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Thomas Carlyle

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

William Shakespeare

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

W. Somerset Maugham

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

Mark Twain

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

Hansell B. Duckett

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

10.

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

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Demosthenes

15.

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

Cioran, E. M.

16.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

17.

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

Noonan, Peggy

18.

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

19.

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

Proverb, Arabian

20.

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

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.

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

23.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

24.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

25.

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

26.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

27.

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

William Shakespeare

28.

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

29.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

30.

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

31.

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

Moralia

32.

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

Hubbard, Kin

33.

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

William Shakespeare

34.

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

Mann, Thomas

35.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

36.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

37.

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

Sophocles

38.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

39.

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

Tiberius

40.

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

Syrus, Publilius

41.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

42.

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

43.

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

Raphael, Frederic

44.

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.

45.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

46.

A long tongue shortens life.

47.

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

48.

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

Hesse, Hermann

49.