Quotes & Sayings About Speakers

President Clinton is going to embrace President Obama, as he should. They are working together. They're different kinds of people. Obama is cool, Clinton is a schmoozer. Both are great speakers. It's a great merging of the party. — Bill Richardson

Together and separately, we as speakers disproved another description used to disqualify feminists: that we were all "whitemiddleclass," a phrase used by the media then (and academics who believe those media clippings now) as if it were a single adjective to describe the women's movement. In fact, the first-ever nationwide poll of women's opinions on issues of gender equality showed that African American women were twice as likely as white women to support them.8 If the poll had included Latinas, Asian Americans, Native Americans, — Gloria Steinem

What is the role of intellectuals in Europe? There's this debate in which all speakers do not appear to me to even be intellectuals. Why is Martin Sommers an intellectual? It is a political journalist who writes mediocre pieces. If that is sufficient to call yourself a 'European intellectual then the question of the debate has already become rhetorical. — Martijn Benders

The studio part, to me, can be pretty laborious. You're inside for hours on end and can be pretty frustrating to get the sound you hear in your head to come out of those speakers. — Mike Love

I usually disliked whatever was being played on a music store's speakers. It spoiled the pleasure of thinking about other music. Record shops, I felt, should be silent spaces; there, more than anywhere else, the mind needed to be clear. — Teju Cole

Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are 'fashionable,' it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation. — Christopher Hitchens

We did tons of research. We went to visit a prison. We had speakers. We have read tons of supplementary material, books and articles. We are constantly emailing articles around the writers' room. We have dipped ourselves in prison culture and lore and media, and the experience and the people. We really want to be as informed as possible. — Jenji Kohan

We have to start encouraging women to get into math and science early on in life ... But to just say TechCrunch is perpetuating the problem because there aren't enough women speakers at our events is just a way to get attention and not solve the problem. So do we want to solve the problem, or do we want to just pick on me? — Michael Arrington

When I think of my Latina side, I imagine family barbecues with carne asada, rice, beans, tortillas and a jalapeno on my plate along with 'Vicente Fernandez' blaring out the speakers. Spicy food. Salsa. Tamales. Family. — Alicia Sixtos

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping. — Norman MacCaig

When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you about the object: it only tells you about the speakers attitude to that object. — C.S. Lewis

Can anybody tell me why reporters, in making mention of lady speakers, always consider it to be necessary to report, fully and firstly, the dresses worn by them? When John Jones or Senator Rouser frees his mind in public, we are left in painful ignorance of the color and fit of his pants, coat, necktie and vest - and worse still, the shape of his boots. This seems to me a great omission. — Fanny Fern

I have not learned a single lesson, been inspired or impacted by another person's life void of negative experiences. — John Paul Warren

Words accrue and lose meaning through a semantic mobility dependent on the community in which they thrive, and these meanings cannot be divorced from bodily sensation and emotion. Slang emerges among a circle of speakers. Irony requires double consciousness, reading one meaning and understanding another. Elegant prose involves a feeling for the rhythms and the music of sentences, a product of the sensual pleasure a writer takes in the sounds of words and the varying metric beats of sentences. Creative translation must take all this into account. If a meaning is lost in one sentence, it might be gained or added to the next one. Such considerations are not strictly logical. They do not involve a step-by-step plan but come from the translator's felt understanding of the two languages involved. Rodney — Siri Hustvedt

A bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers. — Alexander Smith

I remember being at the premiere of 'Beverly Hills Cop II' and the tremendous reaction from the crowd outside, then going to a party at a hotel afterwards where the speakers were blasting 'Shakedown,' a song from the movie. That felt like a show biz moment to me. — Gilbert Gottfried

I love good, loud speakers. — Brian Eno

Language and History in Viking Age England: Language Relations between Speakers of Old Norse and Old English (Turnbout, 2002). — F. Donald Logan

Each language has its own take on the world. That's why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world. — Kate Grenville

This brought to mind a story about George Bernard Shaw, the British author who found himself arranging a literary colloquium. Shaw told one of the speakers that he would have twenty minutes. Shocked, this man of letters responded, "How can I possibly tell the group everything I know on this subject in twenty minutes?" Shaw replied, "I suggest you speak very slowly. — Ed Mickolus

I noticed that Halliday had added an old eight-track tape player to the cockpit control panel. There was also a rack of eight-track tapes mounted over my right shoulder. I grabbed one and slapped it into the deck. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC began to blast out of the robot's internal and external speakers, so loud it made my chair vibrate. — Ernest Cline

Mocho was a Spanish word that meant maimed or referred to something that had been lopped off like a stump. To call Homer el mocho was, essentially, to call him "Stumpy" or "the maimed one."
It doesn't sound particularly flattering, but among Spanish speakers the giving of nicknames is tantamount to a declaration of love. Things that would sound insulting outright in English were tokens of deep affection when said in Spanish. — Gwen Cooper

radio is what moves through the microphone and speakers into the ears of the discerning listener. Radio is what it transmits to the listener at any moment in time. Who sits behind the microphone makes the microphone worth the ears of great and noble listeners. The impact of radio lies less in the name of the radio and much in what it transmits each passing second — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Serial tasking is hard because switching tasks is hard, even when the tasks are easy and similar. In some experiments, bilingual speakers are asked to read out numbers, first in one language and then midway in another language. They often stumble at the switch, taking many tries before they hit their stride again. — Sendhil Mullainathan

One of the speakers asked how many women had been harassed or abused sexually in their life? There were thousands of women in the audience, and almost every one of them raised her hand. — Cheryl James

There has never been a meaningful life built on easy street. — John Paul Warren

Most people listening to presentations around the world right now are hoping their speakers will end soon. That's all they want. — Scott Berkun

Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas. — Steven Pinker

Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness. Keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth ... all those glorious words. — Cornelia Funke

I recognized the words "domestic violence" because the Japanese use the same words, only with blockier pronunciation. " Domesuchikku baiorensu". I think it's weird they use the same word; I'm pretty sure they invented domestic violence independently of us English-speakers, at the same time we were inventing it independently of them. — Tim Rogers

The complexities of the English language are such that even native speakers cannot always communicate effectively, as almost every American learns on his first day in Britain. — Bill Bryson

We try to preach innovation. We provide resources; we invite speakers in from universities to talk about new ideas. — Irwin M. Jacobs

We need to build websites with celebrity speakers who talk about the ideals of fairness, sharing, democratic cooperation, and altruism in public life. — Deepak Chopra

One of the favorite speakers was a man in red who warned of sickle-cell anemia, 'a deadly organism lurking in all nigger blood.'

'If so much as one drop of nigger blood gets in your baby's cereal,' he said, 'the baby will surely die in one year.' He did not explain how he thought a negro would come to bleed in anyone's cereal. — Charles Portis

A second problem is called "anchoring". In a classic study Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman secretly fixed a roulette wheel to land on either 10 or 65. The researchers span the wheel before their subjects, who were then asked to guess the percentage of members of the United Nations that were in Africa. Participants were influenced by irrelevant information: the average guess after a spin of 10 was 25%; for a spin of 65, it was 45%. In meetings, anchoring leads to a first-mover advantage. Discussions will focus on the first suggestions (especially if early speakers benefit from a halo effect, too). Mr Kahneman recommends that to overcome this, every participant should write a brief summary of their position and circulate it prior to the discussion. — Anonymous

The best public speakers are those who seem to genuinely enjoy giving a speech. Because they're relaxed, we're relaxed. — Richard Zeoli

Introverts think carefully before they speak. We can be excellent public speakers because we prepare carefully. — Sophia Dembling

Babies and language are the essential ingredients of civilization, and speakers of language no more know where it came from than babies know where they come from. — Charlton Laird

I decided I would open this little actors' workshop I always told actors to look for. That gave me something to do on Wednesday nights, and after about a year of that, I realized that some of the things I was saying to actors probably had broader application. I ran into a magazine called 'Speakers For Free.' — Robert Forster

The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth. — Aldous Huxley

I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term social justice. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

The speaker must choose a comprehensible [verstandlich] expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another. — Jurgen Habermas

Give Obama a script he has made his own, and he is the motivational speaker to end all speakers. Tony Robbins cloned with Honest Abe. — Tina Brown

Damn Speakers! I always forget about her sneaky little spies. The image of a little voyeur squirrel hanging around outside my window and then running to Jenna to report any indiscretions on my part was absolutely horrifying. — D.T. Dyllin

Who needs psychiatrists? Who needs grief counsellors and life coaches and motivational speakers? Fuck all that! Just stare at the night sky and let yourself get lost in it every now and then. — J.A. Redmerski

The silence was suddenly too much. He hit the CD button on the car's radio. Brian Jones's sitar riff opened for Charlie Watts tribal-like drumbeat thundering from the speakers. Keith Richards' jangly guitar joined in, followed by Mick singing about seeing a red door that he wanted to paint black. — Glenn Rolfe

Hitler and Mussolini even went so far as to persecute Esperanto speakers. — Bill Bryson

Vianello had the knack of getting people to talk. Especially if they were Venetians, the people he interviewed invariably warmed to this large, sweet-tempered man who gave every appearance of speaking Italian reluctantly, who was only too glad to lapse into their common dialect, a linguistic change that often carried its speakers along to unconscious revelation. — Donna Leon

Mounting those red stairs [in Cannes] is something I've done with a very different intention many times. So it's interesting any time you witness those shifts of perspective. The beach scenes were also fun. It felt very strange and very theatrical to kind of commandeer it and have La Mer booming over the speakers. — Willem Dafoe

She stood in front of the speakers instead and closed her eyes, not really dancing, just bouncing and whispering the lyrics. After the first verse, she was dancing. — Rainbow Rowell

That makes me think, my friend, as I have often done before, how natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen. — Plato

Tamilians love to irritate non-Tamil speakers by speaking in Tamil only. — Chetan Bhagat

There are two types of speakers: those that
are nervous and those that are liars. — Mark Twain

Living life ONCE is enough ... if you live life RIGHT. — John Paul Warren

The human facility for perceiving speech begins very young: small babies have been shown to prefer the sounds of speech to nonspeech sounds. It is a fascinating paradox that humans can hear only up to fifteen different non-speech sounds per second, and beyond this they hear unremitting noise. Yet when they decode speech, they hear twenty to thirty distinct sounds per second. Somehow human speakers can pack, and in turn unpack, almost twice as many sounds if those sounds consist of consonants and vowels that are the components of the language they speak. — Christine Kenneally

Leaders in OVER their heads is the mere result of getting ahead of their intended SEASON. — John Paul Warren

Speakers are very busy people, with their own lives.
Once you remember that sentence then it's easy to know how to treat them and attract them. — Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers. — Madame De Stael

And certainly there are many speakers whom I'd like to see do more trembling, more unknowing, more apologizing. — Maggie Nelson

Speakers' nerves affect them in various ways. Some tremble, some become frenzied. I lose all confidence, and suffer from a leaden oppression that makes me wonder why I ever agreed to speak at all; the Tomb and the Conqueror Worm seem preferable to delivering the stupid and piffling speech I have so carefully prepared. — Robertson Davies

The spiritual-but-nonreligious movement is largely driven by charismatic authors and speakers who attract like-minded people to their workshops and intensives. — Gudjon Bergmann

If Madison had a gun, she'd shoot out the sound system pumping "Jingle Bells" through her office speakers. Instead, she bit off Rudolph's chocolate head and pointed a finger at the brightly colored, foil-wrapped Santa on her desk. "You're next, big guy. — Debbie Mason

Cole," I breathed, "what have you done to yourself?"
The wolf's head jerked back toward its shoulders, again and again.
Cole sang from the speakers, his voice slow and uncertain against a sparse backing of just piano, a different Cole than I'd ever heard:
If I am Hannibal
where are my Alps? — Maggie Stiefvater

The theory behind AltConf is simple: it's worth being in town for WWDC, even if you don't have tickets, and if you're already there, you might as well go to the conference next door. The reality of what AltConf has become is an important addition to the very controlled stream of information Apple provides. Some of the industry's best speakers don't work at Apple, and some of the industry's most important topics aren't being discussed by Hair Force One. — Mike Lee

I went to junkyards, abandoned car lots. I asked supermarkets for the big jugs they put pig guts in, to make cabinets for my bass speakers. — Grandmaster Flash

The intercom crackled. Buford's Mini-Hedge yelled over the speakers, PUT SOME CLOTHES ON! — Rick Riordan

There are two kinds of speakers. Those who are nervous and those who are liars. — Mark Twain

Students and invited speakers do not shed their constitutional rights when they step up to the graduation podium. Expressing faith in God does not disqualify a student from delivering a graduation message. Being designated as valedictorian or salutatorian is an honor, and students chosen for that honor should be free to share their gratitude to God with their fellow students and family members. — Mathew Staver

Mirrors are both truth-speakers and liars. — Jodi Meadows

When I give talks like the one I'm going to give at the Changing Advertising Summit, one of the points I often make to the audience is that I'm not one of those speakers who stands in front of the audience and pontificates - everything I talk about I'm actually doing myself. I'm living it. — Cindy Gallop

The Shiv Sena was the handiwork of a cartoonist named Bal Thackeray, whose main target was south Indians, whom he claimed were taking away jobs from the natives. Thackeray lampooned dhoti-clad 'Madrasis' in his writings and drawings; while his followers attacked Udupi restaurants and homes of Tamil and Telugu speakers. — Ramachandra Guha

The computer seems easy because Apple makes the products so easy to use at home. It's the simple things, like getting the TV set up or getting the speakers to work. That drives me crazy. — Chris O'Donnell

Our language places us in a cultural continuum, linking us to the past, and showing our meanings also to future fellow-speakers. — Nicholas Ostler

A language is the joint historical creation of millions of speakers. Although all speakers have some effect on the trajectory of a language, the process is not particularly egalitarian. Linguists, grammarians, and educators, some of them backed by the power of the state, weigh in heavily. But the process is not particularly amenable to a dictatorship, either. Despite the efforts toward "central planning," language (especially its everyday spoken form) stubbornly tends to go on its own rich, multivalent, colorful way. — James C. Scott

George Bernard Shaw of England stopped over just long enough to make one speech in Bombay, India, started a war and 100 Indians killed each other. That's what I call good speech-making. The only enthusiasm any of our speakers can rouse is a demand to kill the speaker. — Will Rogers

If we were rational enough to judge what we are fed based on what we are fed, those in the business of selling us hope (i.e., public speakers, presidents, priests, etc.) wouldn't wear suits. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I'm a nature lover, I want at any given time to be able to bring lots of plants into my house, have lots of light flooding in, have lots of natural elements. Reclaimed lumbers, actual live edge slab tables. I do love technology, but I want the TV to be hidden away a little, I want the speakers to be up on the ceiling. — Sebastian Clovis

It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches ... A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers. — Richard Posner

A person's native tongue influences the way he or she perceives music. The same succession of notes may sound different depending on the language the listener learned growing up.12 As evidence, speakers of tonal languages including Mandarin are more likely than Westerners to have perfect pitch. In one study, 92 percent of Mandarin speakers who began the music lessons at or before the age of five had perfect pitch compared to 8 percent of English speakers with comparable music training. — Ken Robinson

Popularizing - much less venturing beyond one's secure turf - was frowned upon for many years. I think I probably internalized the prohibition, even though I was - and knew I was - among the best speakers and writers of my age cohort. I don't mean I was the best historian - a quite different measure. — Tony Judt

Satirical writers and speakers are not half so clever as they think themselves, nor as they are thought to be. They do winnow the corn, it is true, but it is to feed upon the chaff. I am sorry to add that they who are always speaking ill of others are also very apt to be doing ill to them. It requires some talent and some generosity to find out talent and generosity in others, though nothing but self-conceit and malice are needed to discover or to imagine faults. It is much easier for an ill-natured man than for a good-natured man to be smart and witty. — James Sharp

If money is a form of speech, as the Supreme Court has regrettably found, rich donors will always be the loudest speakers. — Howard Dean

The speakers sing with the sound, smiling to the heavens, angels dropping dead with the beautiful poison of her voice. — C.M. Stunich

I do not speak of what I cannot praise. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

[I] browsed far outside science in my reading and attended public lectures - Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, Huxley, and Shaw being my favorite speakers. — Raymond Cattell

Life of any real value or substance is not formed during good times merely enjoyed. — John Paul Warren

It is a fact, indeed, that most of
the great teachers of mankind have been not writers
but speakers. Think of Pythagoras, Christ, Socrates,
the Buddha, and so on. And since I have spoken of
Socrates, I would like to say something about Plato. I
remember Bernard Shaw said that Plato was the dramatist
who invented Socrates — Jorge Luis Borges

Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners. — Anthony Trollope

It makes a great difference to a speaker whether he has something to say, or has to say something. — Nellie L. McClung

Speakers find joy in public speaking when they realize that a speech is all about the audience, not the speaker. Most speakers are so caught up in their own concerns and so driven to cover certain points or get a certain message across that they can't be bothered to think in more than a perfunctory way about the audience. And the irony is, of course, that there is no hope of getting your message across if that's all the energy you put into the audience. So let go, and give the moment to the audience. — Nick Morgan

This weekend the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, featured several speakers including Sarah Palin and Phil Robertson from 'Duck Dynasty.' It was a good weekend for conservatives - and a great weekend for wild animals. — Jimmy Fallon

English is not merely a language anymore; it has become a way of life for millions of non-native English speakers around the world. — M.F. Moonzajer

We are truth-speakers, we men of Gondor. We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt. "Not if I found it on the highway would I take it," I said. Even if I were such a man as to desire this thing, and even though I knew not clearly what this thing was when I spoke, still I should take those words as a vow, and be held by them. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Jim Rohn is outstanding! He is among the most polished, professional speakers in America, with a message everyone should hear. — Brian Tracy

Here is just the beginning of a list of skills that exam results cannot possibly hope to reflect: interpersonal skills, the ability to entertain, how articulate we are as speakers, our ability to work as part of a team, the ability to deal with challenges and invention. — Alexandra Adornetto

What then, is correctness of speech but the maintenance of the practice of others, as established by the authority of ancient speakers? But the weaker men are, the more they are troubled by such matters. Their weakness stems from a desire to appear learned, not with a knowledge of things, by which we are edified, but with a knowledge of signs, by which it is difficult not to be puffed up in some way; even a knowledge of things often makes people boastful, unless their necks are held down by the Lord's yoke. — Augustine Of Hippo

There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans
who were not allowed to learn to read and write
and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed. — Barbara Ehrenreich

The unprepared speaker has a right to be afraid. — Ralph C. Smedley

Contrary to English which has two liquid phonemes, Asian languages have one liquid consonant which causes Asian speakers to have difficulty in hearing and producing /L/ and /R/ accurately. When we examine the pictographic script we observe that the sickle tool is represented by a staff-shaped pictograph signaling the letter 'L' and the head is represented by a head-shaped pictograph signaling the letter 'R'; it is as if the Asiatic culture got historically traumatized based on the cultural confrontation between the Aryan and Semitic traditions. If we look at Early Aramaic alphabet we observe that the 'R' looks like a serpent's head and 'L' looks like the sickle. If originally the script got developed from hieroglyphs, then it ought to operate in that same manner rather than being phonetically produced for example by the sound of cutting wheat for the letter 'R' as my friend Randy Simons suggested. — Ibrahim Ibrahim

I, indeed, following the true law of history, have never set down any fact that I have not learned from trustworthy speakers or writers. — William Of Malmesbury