Great Speech Quotes & Sayings

In a society so estranged from animals as ours, we often fail to credit them with any form of language. If we do, it comes under the heading of communication rather than speech. And yet, the great silence we have imposed on the rest of life contains innumerable forms of expression. Where does our own language come from but this unfathomed store that characterizes innumerable species?
We are now more than halfway removed from what the unwritten word meant to our ancestors, who believed in the original, primal word behind all manifestations of the spirit. You sang because you were answered. The answers come from life around you. Prayers, chants, and songs were also responses to the elements, to the wind, the sun and stars, the Great Mystery behind them. Life on earth springs from a collateral magic that we rarely consult. We avoid the unknown as if we were afraid that contact would lower our sense of self-esteem. — John Hay

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence. — Jonathan Swift

[I]t's necessary to exert very great foresight every time you go to blame or praise a man, so that you won't speak incorrectly ... For you shouldn't suppose that, while stones are sacred and pieces of wood, and birds, and snakes, human beings are not. Rather of all these things, the most sacred is the good human being, while the most polluted is the wicked.
Speech attributed to Socrates in Plato, Minos 319a, trans. Thomas L. Pangle, in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 63. — Plato

The thing that got Daley mad," one of the delegates said later, "was that Ribicoff had been ass-kissing him just a day or two before. He came over and pushed for McGovern to our delegation and made a big speech about what a great guy Daley was. Then he got up there and played the hero for the TV cameras."
Daley was on his feet, his arms waiving, his mouth working. The words were lost in the uproar, but it was later asserted by Mayday, an almost-underground Washington paper, that a lip-reader had determined that he said: "Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker, go home. — Mike Royko

Groups give us power when we are enthusiastic, speak up, make bold assertions, and express an interest in others. Our capacity to influence rises when we practice kindness, express appreciation, cooperate, and dignify what others say and do. We are more likely to make a difference in the world when we are focused, articulate clear purposes and courses of action, and keep others on task. We rise in power when we provide calm and remind people of broader perspectives during times of stress, tell stories that calm during times of tension, and practice kind speech. Our opportunity for influence increases when we are open and ask great questions, listen to others with receptive minds, and offer playful ideas and novel perspectives. The — Dacher Keltner

From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Mexico is a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without a free ballot, without a jury system, without political parties, without any of our cherJ ished guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a land where there has been no contest for the office of president for more than a generation, where the executive rules all things by means of a standing army, where political offices are sold for a fixed price. I found Mexico to be a land where the people are poor because they have no rights, where peonage is the rule for the great mass, and where actual chattel slavery obtains for hundreds of thousands. — John Kenneth Turner

I maintain that Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism all hold up love as an ideal, seek to benefit humanity through spiritual practice, and strive to make their followers better people. All religions teach moral precepts for the advancement of mind, body, speech, and action: do not lie or steal or take others' lives, and so on. Unselfishness is the common foundation laid down by all great spiritual teachers. — Dalai Lama XIV

Finding that she was determined to get to the bottom of what seemed to him a very trivial affair, extricated himself without hesitation or compunction by advising her to apply to Vincent for information, since he was the instigator of the quarrel. Before he could make good his retreat, however, he was incensed and appalled by a command to go immediately to Vincent's room, and to inform him that his mama desired to have speech with him before he went down to breakfast. Since it was the time-honoured practice of the brothers to sacrifice each other in such situations as now confronted Claud, it was not fear of Vincent's wrath at finding himself betrayed which prompted Claud to despatch Polyphant on the errand, but the knowledge that not even a messenger bearing gifts of great price would meet with anything but the rudest of receptions from Vincent at this hour of the morning. — Georgette Heyer

Words alone can effect great good as well as evil. A few apt words have swept candidates into office, ended as well as started wars, paved the way for peace and carried with them both hope as well as despair. Words alone have ruined lives, but have also brought forth healing. It is well known the harm words can cause, but the good they can bring is equally impressive. — Steve Goodier

As the map of the Great Plain was being redrawn by a young Shazarian councillor, the ageing Shylonian king interrupted mid-speech to ask him his name. With a piercing glare and a haughty flick of his cloak, he retorted 'Lord Ratilla, Shazarian Imperial Secretary, and who might you be?' Behind the gasps of horror, the message was clear. It was Shazaria who now bestrode the Amaran world, henceforth the office of Shazarian minister now held greater prestige than even that of foreign monarchs. What became even clearer were the depths of Shazarian treachery. The impudent youth who stood before the kings of Amara stripping them of ancient provinces, was the same adolescent reputed to have delivered an eloquent speech which swayed the Shazarian councillors in favour of war.
Had this been their intention all along? — A.H. Septimius

He spent the next ten minutes giving a speech about the great day that is the day of their Surrender, and I can't be bothered to remember it all (it went on for nine minutes too long, if you ask me), but suffice it to say that it was a heart-warming speech that excited the crowd and sent jitters up Alice's skirts; and anyway, I hope you don't mind but I'd like to skip ahead to the part where things actually happen. — Tahereh Mafi

Her parents were going to a conference for the weekend. The conference was called "Lawyers are Lovely, Great and Superb: so Why Does Everyone Think that They are Liars, Greedy and Scum?" and Mr Thomson was doing a speech called "Ten Tips to Make Lawyers as Popular as Doctors. — Jaclyn Moriarty

The great error consists in supposing that poetry is an unnatural form of language. We should all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech. It is not song that is the narrow or artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering attempt at song. When we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like Cyrano de Bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. — G.K. Chesterton

THE MIGRANT PEOPLE , scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement. Sometimes amusement lay in speech, and they climbed up their lives with jokes. And it came about in the camps along the roads, on the ditch banks beside the streams, under the sycamores, that the story teller grew into being, so that the people gathered in the low firelight to hear the gifted ones. And they listened while the tales were told, and their participation made the stories great. — John Steinbeck

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement. — J.K. Rowling

The great modern heresy in poetry is to confuse the use we make of words in a poem with modalities of speech ... For true poetry is never speech but always a song. — Herbert Read

The Jesuits were good educators, exceptional teachers. In an era and in a society where freedom of speech was not held in high regard, of course, that the discourse be focused on what they were teaching, but we were able to go beyond this framework without incurring too great a risk. — Pierre Trudeau

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another ... — Maurice Maeterlinck

The Poor Children

Take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great; he hath in him God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights alive in the blue sky.

In our light bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And his forgiveness in their smile.

Their sweet light rests upon our eyes.
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry Paradise
Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.

The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on sin's ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,

When God seeks out these tender things
Whom in the shadow where we sleep
He sends us clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that weep — Victor Hugo

Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it - equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press - and only for that reason did he obtain power. — Leo Tolstoy

When we live with another person, we should help each other transform the internal formations that we have produced in each other. By practicing understanding and loving speech, we can help each other a great deal. Happiness is no longer an individual matter. If the other person is not happy, we will not be happy either. Therefore, to transform the internal formations in the other is to bring about our own happiness as well. A person can create internal formations in her partner, and her partner can do so for her, and if they continue to create knots in each other, one day they'll have no happiness left. A person needs to recognize quickly any newly formed knot inside herself. She should take the time to observe it and, with her partner's help, transform the internal formation. She might say, "Darling, I have an internal formation. Can you please help me?" This is easy when the states of mind of both partners are still light and not loaded with many internal formations. — Thich Nhat Hanh

A great speech is literature. — Peggy Noonan

The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is the written human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought. — Albert Pike

There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester's bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh. — Robert E. Howard

I get flack for saying [when I visit a college and give a speech], "This is a nice college, but the really great educator is McDonald's." They hate me for saying this and think I'm a slimy creature. But McDonald's hires people with bad work habits, trains them, and teaches them to come to work on time and have good work habits. I think a lot of what goes on there is better than at Harvard. — Charlie Munger

Leon Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level. — Robert Moog

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech — Flannery O'Connor

Investigate the faeries. Great. That was absolutely guaranteed to get complicated before I got any useful answers. If there was one thing faeries hated doing, it was giving you a straight answer, about anything. Getting plain speech out out of one is like pulling out teeth. Your own teeth. Through your nose. — Jim Butcher

regardless of the false nature of racial categories, the concept of race holds great social force. Our society uses race in spite of some people's disavowal and often treats us differentially as a result. Race has truly gotten under our skin, into our psyche, and lingers within the layers of our unconscious. To begin honestly, we must discuss what may be the most challenging aspect of any discussion of race. We must deal with the terms racist, racism, and systemic white supremacy. We must also confront the fact that some people might ask us to associate those words with our speech and actions. — Shelly Tochluk

In case the rest of you missed it, the inspirational speech was: 'If you work hard, you can achieve great things. And then you die'. — Scott Adams

To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Again, it is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs. And if it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against all good things except virtue, and above all against the things that are most useful, as strength, health, wealth, generalship. A man can confer the greatest of benefits by a right use of these, and inflict the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly. — Aristotle.

The issue regarding the soul's relation to the state is posed with great force by Plato but also by More, not only in his fictional Utopia but also in later life when the issue would arise in a dramatically personal way because he found that neither laws nor rhetorical speech could save him from execution for a silence that he insisted was required by his soul.6 — Gerard B. Wegemer

Wouldn't it be wonderful if every home had good books instead of knick-knacks and plastic flowers on the bookshelves? And wouldn't it be great if every child heard good speech and received thoughtful answers to their questions instead of 'be quiet' or 'go to bed'? — Ernest L. Boyer

The fundamentals that founded our great nation included the freedom of speech and religion. — Markwayne Mullin

JA: We wouldn't mind a leak from Google, which would be, I think,
probably all the Patriot Act requests.275
ES: Which would be [whispers] illegal.
[Nervous chuckles]
JA: It depends on the jurisdiction ... !
[Chuckles]
ES: We are a US
JA: There are higher laws. First Amendment, you know.
ES: No, I've actually spent quite a bit of time on this question because I am
in great trouble because I have given a series of criticisms about Patriot I
and Patriot II, because they're nontransparent, because the judge's orders
are hidden and so forth and so on. The answer is that the laws are quite
clear about Google in the US. We couldn't do it. It would be illegal. — Julian Assange

Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech. — Winston Churchill

A great man left a watchword that we can well repeat: "There is no indispensable man" — Franklin D. Roosevelt

It was a good speech, but the reaction was due to the fact that politics are madness, and even if one does not know it, a country in electoral season experiences flares of lunacy like the great storms that sometimes march across the golden surface of the sun. — Mark Helprin

The great thing about improvisation is that it allows us to establish an uncensored form of theater. Freedom of speech is absolutely inherent to artistic expression. — Lucien Bourjeily

After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision. By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment
Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It's been a great run. — Hank Williams Jr.

The greatest and truest models for all oratorsis Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators. — Woodrow Wilson

One of the curious aspects of the Twenty-First Century was the great delusion amongst many people, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, that freedom of speech and freedom of expression were best exercised on technological platforms owned by corporations dedicated to making as much money as possible. — Jarett Kobek

If Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he would want me to say to all the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by the churches, by the government, by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours. — Dustin Lance Black

The literary gift is a very dangerous gift to possess if you are not telling the truth, and I would a great deal rather, for my part, have a man stumble in his speech than to feel he was so exceedingly smooth that he had better be watched both day and night. — Woodrow Wilson

Depending on your political orientation, the Dixie Chicks are either the great defenders of free speech or American traitors. — Shawn Amos

My school friends thought I was outgoing and bubbly, but that masked a lot of insecurities, and maybe that's the reason I chose drama - to build a bit of self-confidence. I had a great teacher, and I won a few speech and drama competitions and just fell in love with it. — Deborah Mailman

His deeds and life are more important to me than his talk, the gesture of his hand is more important to me than his opinions. Not in speech or thought do I regard him as a great man, but in his deeds and life. — Hermann Hesse

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far-distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush--and that was all. — Robert Frost

I've got a great sense of where I want to lead and I'm comfortable with why I'm running. And, you know, the call on that speech was, beware. This is going to be a tough campaign. — George W. Bush

So much for a great opening speech, that sucker done tucked tail and is hiding in the deepest part of my brain, sucking its thumb. — Brandy Nacole

This is indeed India!
... . The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday's bear date with the modering antiquities for the rest of nations-the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined. — Mark Twain

Maybe the difference between speech and music isn't all that great. We infer a lot from the tone of someone's voice, so imagine that aspect of speech pushed just a little further. The weird cadences of a Valley girl, for instance, might be viewed as a species of singing. The malls of Sherman Oaks are a setting for a kind of massed choir. — David Byrne

Generate great impressions. This is a direct result of setting higher standards for yourself in your speech, dress, living environment, grooming, etiquette, study, research and commitment. — Archibald Marwizi

Governments from the top fail as often as those from the bottom; and every great failure brings a sad social reaction, thousands and millions of helpless men laying down their lives in the unhappy process. Why may not statesmen study the past and avoid such catastrophes?
Delivered in his capacity as the American Ambassador to Germany, on October 12, 1933, in a speech to the Berlin branch of the American Chamber of Commerce, quoted in Erik Larson's book, In the Garden of Beasts. — William E. Dodd

Growing up in a family of actors, what's great about it is that they're very supportive and they understand what it's like to be an actor - the rejections, the highs and lows ... and having a common language with them is great because you have shorthand speech. — Chris Pine

A poet is wounded into speech, and he examines these wounds, meticulously, to discover how to heal them. The bad poet harangues at the pain and yowls at the weapons that lacerate him; the great poet explores the inflamed lips of ruined flesh with ice-caked fingers, glittering and precise; but ultimately his poem is the echoing, dual voice reporting the damages. — Samuel R. Delany

Believe me, those great death bed speeches are written ahead of time. — Scott Simon

If anything, Brown is more oriented towards the other side of the Atlantic than Blair. Most of his reforming ideas and intellectual influences seem to come from the United States, and in a recent speech he went to great lengths to emphasise the historical affinity and shared characteristics of the U.K. and the U.S. — Martin Jacques

I was very much influenced by a great book by the scholar Neil Richards called Intellectual Privacy, that [Louis] Brandeis changed his mind on the proper balance between dignity and free speech. — Jeffrey Rosen

Oh, how our good knight reveled in this speech, and more than ever when he came to think of the name that he should give his lady! As the story goes, there was a very good=looking farm girl who lived near by, with whom he had once been smitten, although it is generally believed that she never knew or suspected it. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and it seemed to him that she was the one upon whom he should bestow the title of mistress of his thoughts. For her he wished a name that should not be incongruous with his own and that would convey the suggestion of a princess or a great lady; and, accordingly, he resolved to call her "Dulcinea del Toboso," she being a native of that place. A musical name to his ears, out of the ordinary and significant, like the others he had chosen for himself and his appurtenances. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths. — Simon Heffer

About the greatest virtue a friend can have, is to be able to hold her tongue; and through this, like all virtues carried to extremity, may grow into a fault, and do great harm, still, it never can do so much harm as that horrible laxity and profligacy of speech which is a the root of half the quarrels, cruelties, and injustices of the world. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. — Joseph Devlin

Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes - the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders - who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:

"It's the ghost!" And she locked the door.

- Chapter 1: Is it the Ghost? — Gaston Leroux

I wouldn't perform in front of the Nazis. I hear they didn't take freedom of speech too well. It would be a fun gig to rip into them, but I don't think the ending would be great for me. — Jim Jefferies

A nation orients itself by its own geniuses, and derives from them its ideas of its own ideals, but the guiding star serves also as a light to other nations. As speech has been created by a few great men, the most extraordinary wisdom lies concealed in it, a wisdom which reveals itself to a few ardent explorers but which is usually overlooked by the stupid professional philologists. — Otto Weininger

Being Kind Not in some great deed of heroism; not in some great speech or act that may be pointed to with pride-but rather in the little kindnesses from day to day ... — Edgar Cayce

The traditional boundaries between various fields of science are rapidly disappearing and what is more important science does not know any national borders. The scientists of the world are forming an invisible network with a very free flow of scientific information - a freedom accepted by the countries of the world irrespective of political systems or religions ... Great care must be taken that the scientific network is utilized only for scientific purposes - if it gets involved in political questions it loses its special status and utility as a nonpolitical force for development. — Sune Bergstrom

Women and men communicate differently, often on entirely different planes. But just as men have failed us, we have failed them. It has been one of our great collective female shortcomings to presume that whatever we do not perceive simply isn't there, or that whatever is not communicated in our language is not intelligible speech. — Norah Vincent

The person who abides in solitude and quiet is delivered from fighting three battles: hearing, speech, and sight. Then there remains one battle to fight-the battle of the heart. — Anthony The Great

The sheer act of listening speaks volumes that even a great speech can't communicate. — John C. Maxwell

I'm an old man, and I'm no warrior. But during my years watching the rise and fall of those in power, I've learned that great men do not wait for their greatness to be recognized. If you wish to have the respect that you yearn for, then you must grab it and fight anyone who would say otherwise. If you wish to be a duke, you act like a duke. If you wish to be commander-in-chief, then act like a commander-in-chief."
This was not the sort of speech that a younger Mata Zyndu, certain that each man had a proper place assigned to him in the chain of being, would have believed in. But he realized with a start that his thoughts had changed.
Didn't Kuni Garu become a duke simply by acting as one? Didn't Huno Krima become king simply by declaring that he was one? He, Mata Zyndu, heir of the proudest name in all the Islands, was a greater warrior then either of them, and yet here he sat, unhappy that people had not come to beg him to lead them. — Ken Liu

America is a great place, speech is free and you're able to expose the fact that you're an idiot, — Eric Stonestreet

Citizens United fought to defend our right to free speech - and won a great victory in the United States Supreme Court. — Marsha Blackburn

Convention speeches are powerful tools to bend the curve of public opinion. George H. W. Bush's 1988 convention speech is a great example. His son's speech was also quite powerful. — Mark McKinnon

I got four volumes of the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell. He is prominent among the great unread, and treated so oddly by history that I wanted to hear his side of things. — Marilynne Robinson

Free speech is a great idea, but were in a war. — Lindsey Graham

For the first time in her life she could talk openly of the things which interested her and were important to her. She had a great need of speech, of putting her thoughts into words; otherwise her thoughts seemed to escape her, flying about her brain in a wild confusion. It needed the power of words to put them in their places. And Rachel was full of understanding, using her sensitiveness to fan the thoughts of Anna towards coherency. — Anna Kavan

I now understand what Nelle Morton meant when she said that one of the great tasks in our time is to "hear people to speech." Behind their fearful silence, our students want to find their voices, speak their voices, have their voices heard. A good teacher is one who can listen to those voices even before they are spoken-so that someday they can speak with truth and confidence. — Parker J. Palmer

There are guys bleeding to death who don't know it, they're smiling, they're talking, they don't feel pain because they're in shock, they ask you for some water and then they're dead. On D-day I ran past a guy lying on his spilled guts with his eyes closed and his thumb in his mouth. Eisenhower's speech had been read to us over the loudspeaker by our commander when we crossed the channel that morning. What valor and inspiration were in his words- all about how we were embarked on a great crusade, that the hopes and prayers of a liberty loving people were going with us ... I got gooseflesh when he asked for the blessing of almighty god on this great and noble undertaking. But how to reconcile that with spilled guts on a beach and flies in the eyes of some dead nineteen year old kid who traded his life for some words on paper? — Elizabeth Berg

In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of. — George Henry Lewes

India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only. — Mark Twain

In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. — Noam Chomsky

Whatever men do or know or experience can make sense only to the extent that it can be spoken about. There may be truths beyond speech, and they may be of great relevance to man in the singular, that is, to man in so far as he is not a political being, whatever else he may be. Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves. — Hannah Arendt

His eyes blaze and sparkle, his whole face is crimson with blood that surges from the lowest depths of the heart, his lips quiver, his teeth are clenched, his hair bristles and stands on end, his breathing is forced and harsh, his joints crack from writhing, he groans and bellows, bursts out into speech with scarcely intelligible words, strikes his hands together continually, and stamps the ground with his feet; his whole body is excited and performs great angry threats; it is an ugly and horrible picture of distorted and swollen frenzy - you cannot tell if this vice is more execrable or more hideous. — Seneca.

Freedom of thought and freedom of speech in our great institutions are absolutely necessary for the preservation of our country. The moment either is restricted, liberty begins to wither and die ... — John Peter Altgeld

It's a great country: you can say whatever you like so long as it is strictly true
nobody will ever take you seriously. — Edward Abbey

The cemetery is the richest or wealthiest prison of undiscovered, untapped, undeveloped and unfulfilled dreams of presidents that never presided, great orators that never made a speech, astronauts that never went to the moon, doctors that never touched the sick or great preachers that never preached a Sermon — Ikechukwu Joseph

Turkey, with its political intolerance, as I have described it, is prepared to march forward, to break with its taboo about the Armenians, and is making great strides with respect to human rights and freedom of speech so that it can join the European Union. This alone shows how powerful the European idea is. — Orhan Pamuk

In the Reagan administration, a great speech was just the first step in a long process. In the Obama administration, it's the only step. — Kathleen Troia McFarland

It is not so much freedom of speech but the right to truth that great men protect. — Criss Jami

While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song. — David Antin

Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.Their tongues are separate in speech,And their natures as well;Their skins are distinguished,As thou distinguishest the foreign peoples.Thou makest a Nile in the underworld,Thou bringest forth as thou desirestTo maintain the peopleAccording as thou madest them for thyself,The lord of all of them, wearying with them,The lord of every land, rising for them,The Aton of the day, great of majesty. — Akhenaton

Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it. — Herman Melville

God teaches those who come to him in another manner without interior speech or action. It takes place with such secrecy that the soul itself does not know it at the time, nor until it sees itself growing in discretion, and in knowledge of how to direct its own and other people's affairs prudently It also understands many things in Holy Scripture that it could not comprehend before, though it knows not whence this knowledge came. I think that God treats these people as we treat thrushes and birds that we teach; but they know they are learning. This way of learning is excellent if free from presumption and combined with faith and right reason. However, there is danger in great unrestraint, for it is hateful that a man should concern himself with what is beyond him. — Francisco De Osuna

It is a great misfortune not to possess sufficient wit to speak well, nor sufficient judgment to keep silent. — Jean De La Bruyere

No man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power that strikes up from a thousand minds that acts upon him, and makes the speech. — James A. Garfield

What great delight it is to see the ones we love and then to have speech with them. — Vincent McNabb