Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Walter Bagehot

Best Quotes about Speech

1.

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

2.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

3.

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

Syrus, Publilius

4.

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

Proverb, Arabian

5.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

6.

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

Arendt, Hannah

7.

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

Raphael, Frederic

8.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

9.

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Mark Twain

13.

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

14.

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

Hubbard, Kin

15.

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

16.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

17.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

18.

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

19.

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

William Shakespeare

20.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

21.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

22.

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

23.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

24.

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

Walter Bagehot

25.

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

Cato The Elder

26.

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

27.

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

Seneca

28.

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

William Shakespeare

29.

A long tongue shortens life.

30.

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

Moralia

31.

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

Publilius Syrus

32.

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

Sophocles

33.

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

Chuang-tzu

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

40.

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

Mann, Thomas

41.

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

Noonan, Peggy

42.

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

43.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

44.

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

Hansell B. Duckett

45.

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

46.

Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

Ovid

47.

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

Cruise, Tom

48.

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

49.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

50.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North