Motivational Quotes

Speech

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

- Bacon, Francis

Best Quotes about Speech

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

A long tongue shortens life.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

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

William Shakespeare

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

Proverb, Arabian

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

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

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

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.

10.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

11.

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

Hubbard, Kin

12.

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

13.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

14.

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

Cruise, Tom

15.

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

William Shakespeare

16.

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

William Shakespeare

17.

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

Tiberius

18.

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

Moralia

19.

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

20.

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

Thomas Carlyle

21.

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

Walter Bagehot

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

25.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

26.

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

27.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

28.

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

W. Somerset Maugham

29.

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

Sir William Osler

30.

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

31.

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

Arendt, Hannah

32.

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

Mann, Thomas

33.

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

Demosthenes

34.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

35.

Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also.

Seneca

36.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

37.

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

38.

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

Hesse, Hermann

39.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

40.

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.

41.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

42.

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

43.

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

Cioran, E. M.

44.

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

45.

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

Cato The Elder

46.

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

47.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.

Sir Francis Bacon

48.

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

49.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

50.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.