Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

Best Quotes about Speech

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

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

Walter Bagehot

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

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

Sir William Osler

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Jefferson, Thomas

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

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

10.

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.

11.

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

12.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Arendt, Hannah

16.

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

17.

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

Cioran, E. M.

18.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Cato The Elder

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.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

24.

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

Thomas Carlyle

25.

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

Raphael, Frederic

26.

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

William Shakespeare

27.

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

Tiberius

28.

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

29.

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

William Shakespeare

30.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

31.

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

Proverb, Arabian

32.

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

William Shakespeare

33.

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

34.

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

Seneca

35.

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

36.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Publilius Syrus

42.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

William Shakespeare

43.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

44.

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

William Shakespeare

45.

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

Mann, Thomas

46.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

47.

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

Mark Twain

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

W. Somerset Maugham