Quotes about speech

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?

— Eileen Aitkins

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

— Hannah Arendt

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

— Francis Bacon

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.

— Roland Barthes

It's better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you're stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

— Rami Belson

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

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

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.

— Otto Von Bismarck

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.

— Michael Caine

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.

— Patrick Campbell

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

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Cato The Elder

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

— E. M. Cioran

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.

— Charles Caleb Colton

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.

— Cyril Connolly

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

— Tom Cruise

Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.

— Dionysius of Halicarnassus

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

— Hansell B. Duckett

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.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

— Oriana Fallaci

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.

— Paul Goodman

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

— Hermann Hesse

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

— John Hoskins

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

— Kin Hubbard

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

— Thomas Jefferson

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

— D. H. Lawrence

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

— Thomas Mann

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— Herman Melville

Speech is the small change of silence.

— George Meredith

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

— Peggy Noonan

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.

— Octavio Paz

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

— Arabian Proverb

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

— Frederic Raphael

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.

— Antoine Rivarol

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.

— Richard Rorty

Speech is always bolder than action.

— Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

— George Bernard Shaw

Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.

— Charles Simmons

Speech is the mirror of action.

— Solon

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.

— Konstantin Stanislavisky

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

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

— Publilius Syrus

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

— Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Mark Twain

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.

— Patricia Ann Ball

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

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

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.

— Source Unknown

A long tongue shortens life.

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

A witty saying proves nothing.

— Voltaire

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?

— Walt Whitman

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.

— Thornton Wilder

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.

— Woodrow T. Wilson

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.

— John Andrew Holmes

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

— Hansell B. Duckett

What I say must be under constant scrutiny. It is not enough to silence hurtful speech; I must endeavor to train this wiliest of muscles to enrich the lives of others.

— Natasha Vanderlinden