Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Seneca

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

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

Chuang-tzu

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

Noonan, Peggy

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Bacon, Francis

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

Arendt, Hannah

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

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

Demosthenes

10.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

16.

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

William Shakespeare

17.

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

Raphael, Frederic

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

Tiberius

23.

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

Mark Twain

24.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

25.

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

26.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

27.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

28.

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

29.

A long tongue shortens life.

30.

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

Thomas Carlyle

31.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

32.

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

William Shakespeare

33.

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

Walter Bagehot

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

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

Cruise, Tom

36.

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

37.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

38.

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

39.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

40.

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

Publilius Syrus

41.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

42.

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

Cato The Elder

43.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

48.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

49.

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

50.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von