Motivational Quotes

Speech

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

- Mark Twain

Best Quotes about Speech

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

Hansell B. Duckett

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

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

Seneca

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

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

Moralia

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

Raphael, Frederic

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

10.

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

Tiberius

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

A long tongue shortens life.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Mann, Thomas

20.

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

Mark Twain

21.

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.

Bob Marley

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.

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

Hesse, Hermann

24.

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

Cruise, Tom

25.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice De

26.

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

27.

Readiness of speech is often inability to hold the tongue.

Jean Baptiste Rousseau

28.

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

29.

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

Proverb, Arabian

30.

Thought is the fountain of speech.

Chrysippus

31.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

William Shakespeare

32.

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

33.

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

Sir William Osler

34.

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

William Shakespeare

35.

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

Publilius Syrus

36.

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

37.

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

Demosthenes

38.

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

39.

Speech is always bolder than action.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

40.

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

41.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

42.

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

William Shakespeare

43.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

William Shakespeare

44.

Men of few words are the best men.

William Shakespeare

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

48.

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

49.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

50.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.