Quotes & Sayings About Speech

Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases. — Grant Morrison

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. — Kierkegaard Research Centre

Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese' (Charles de Gaulle, 1961 speech) — Mark Kurlansky

George Bush ran a campaign where he bragged about being an anti-intellectual, dismissing his Harvard and Yale pedigree, pretending he was an American every day, ordinary everyman, and as a result of that, played up his fumbling speech because it signified that he was a good guy. That is deeply and profoundly anti-intellectual. — Michael Eric Dyson

We're the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since, you know, a long time ago! — Taylor Mali

People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolor left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response. If what we say is suitably apt and amusing, the listener will show his delight by emitting a series of uncontrolled high-pitched noises, accompanied by sharp intakes of breath of the sort normally associated with a seizure or heart failure. And by these means we converse. Talking, when you think about it, is a very strange business indeed. — Bill Bryson

You dreamed like all mothers do.
Until he began to speak aloud,
Your boy,
calling for justice in the market place,
Demanding integrity and fair play
in the courts and halls of business.
Declaring the Realm of God
Imminent,
Manifest . . .
Jesus leapt into the swelling crowds
like an axe into wood,
Uncompromising and unrelenting
in his passionate call
for peace and justice.
Jesus, your boy,
causing havoc in public,
critiquing and condemning
the status quo,
breaking rule after rule . . .
And with every speech,
with every act of defiance,
with every call to liberation,
with every amazing deed,
Your dreams of peace and liberation,
Your dreams of a secure old age,
Your dreams of grandchildren--
Evaporated. — Edwina Gateley

P.E. was my life in school. Without it, I wouldn't be standing here. It gave me confidence when I was an overweight kid with a speech impediment. — Herschel Walker

Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical. — Michel De Montaigne

What she had liked better still was his drowsy demeanour and slow manner of speech; he
had seemed inoffensive, the kind of man who would go about his work without causing trouble, not the least desirable of qualities in a husband. — Amitav Ghosh

Ah, the dear earth! The beautiful earth! She wants all that we have--the touch of our hands, the song of our hearts.
She wants to draw out from us all that is within, hidden even from ourselves.
This is her sorrow, that she finds out some things only to know that she has not found all. She loses before she attains.
Ah, the dear earth! We shall never deceive you.

(They sing.)
I shall crown you with my garland, before I take leave.
You ever spoke to me in all my joys and sorrows.
And now, at the end of the day, my own heart will break in speech.
Words came to me, but not the tune, and the song that I never sang to you remains hidden behind my tears. — Rabindranath Tagore

I think actually that the speech work I do is fine. It's important, because I try to help people think about what's going on and organize their lives accordingly. — William J. Clinton

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

He was a consummate politician
which is to say he was given to expedient speech and lacked even a vestigial spine. — Nick Taylor

All the good things on this earth are trophy cups. The strong win them. The weak lose them.
from a speech by the Nazi Minister of Education — William L. Shirer

Real speech can only come from complete silence. Incomplete silence is as fussy as deliberate conversation. — Dorothy Richardson

You know God does not manifest Himself," Halgan shouted. "That is also heresy. The Revelation is not corporeal. You know this. Why do you persist in this perverted speech?"
"I like perverted. Maybe you would, too, if you gave it a chance."
"Leave my men alone," Rakan said coldly. "Degenerate."
Ringil smooched a kiss at him. — Richard K. Morgan

They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyay. Kino sighed with satisfaction
and that was conversation. — John Steinbeck

Lying is a false significance of speech, with a will to deceive, which cannot be cured but by shame and reason; it is a monstrous and wicked evil, that filthily depraved and defileth the tongue of man. — Jon Jones

Moderate people are able to be moderate and have free speech only because there are some people on the fringe. — Patrick Chappatte

Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production. — Herbert Hoover

Do not be satisfied with the speech of your lips and the thought in your heart, all the promises and good sayings in your mouth, and all the good thoughts in your heart; rather you must arise and do! — Menachem Mendel Of Kotzk

Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea. — Abigail Washburn

Every public speaker likes his hearer to imagine his oratory as an unpremeditated gift of nature, and not the result of prolonged and patient study [Lionel Logue said] — Mark Logue

The message of the United States is not nuclear power. The message of the United States is a spiritual message. It is the message of human ideals; it is the message of human dignity; it is the message of the freedom of ideas, speech, press, the right to assemble, to worship, and the message of freedom of movement of people. — Hubert H. Humphrey

A society in which adults are estranged from the world of children, and often from their own childhood, tends to hear children's speech only as a foreign language, or as a lie. Children have been treated. as congenital fibbers, fakers and fantasisers. — Beatrix Campbell

Just as he was slowly bringing order to his own internal life, he would also bring order to his language. — David Brooks

Themistocles replied that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can only be shown by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost. — Plutarch

The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical. He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning. — C. G. Jung

Speech is the birthright of every child. It is the deaf child's one fair chance to keep in touch with his fellows. — Helen Keller

I went to school. I went to Juilliard. You spend 13 hours a day on voice and speech. Now I realize why. — Jennifer Carpenter

I write in order to understand the images. Being what my agent ... somewhat ruefully calls a language playwright, is problematic because in production, you have to make the language lift off the page. But a good actor can turn it into human speech. I err sometimes toward having such a compound of images that if an actor lands heavily on each one, you never pull through to a larger idea. That's a problem for the audience. But I come to playwriting from the visual world - I used to be a painter. I also really love novels and that use of language. But it's tricky to ask that of the theatre. — Ellen McLaughlin

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

How brave a thing is freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas in greatness! — Herodotus

As a consequence, the Court ruled that the limits on campaign spending violated the First Amendment, but it accepted the $1,000 limit on individual contributions on the ground that the need to avoid the appearance of corruption justified this limited constraint on speech. — James L. Buckley

It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish ... to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
Outside The Whale (Granta, 1984) — Salman Rushdie

People underestimate me, maybe because of my look, maybe because of my speech, and I love that. I love to give the impression that I'm an easy victim. I ain't nobody's fool, believe that. — Edgerrin James

Such boycotts threaten academic speech and exchange, which is our solemn duty as academic institutions to protect. — Molly Corbett Broad

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together. — Max Eastman

Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality. — Douglas Adams

The character and the actor in a long-running series slowly become one. I think there must be funny stories about actors who, in the pilot for a TV series, did some weird thing with their eyes, or some speech impediment or something, and the next thing you know, it's eight years later, and they're still doing that freaking gag. — William H. Macy

Some people only speak of freedom of speech while they're out of power. Once they're in power, they're ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. — Barack Obama

In front of us there is an immense garden of words and non-words, a serre, that is, a greenhouse in which are preserved by my care so many things of speech you have given me while leaving me free to cultivate them. — Helene Cixous

After September 11th, freedom of speech in America has become a topic that's touchier than a Vatican summer camp. — Dennis Miller

We must feel toward our people as a father toward his children; yea, the most tender love of a mother must not surpass ours. We must even travail in birth, till Christ be formed in them. They should see that we care for no outward thing, neither liberty, nor honor, nor life, in comparison to their salvation ... When the people see that you truly love them, they will hear anything from you ... Oh therefore, see that you feel a tender love for your people in your hearts, and let them perceive it in your speech and conduct. Let them see that you spend and are spent for their sakes. — Richard Baxter

The men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready; an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. — George Eliot

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

We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but does not understand — Leo Tolstoy

Experience is beyond knowledge, words and speech.
It is experience which shows us the real meaning of life. — Gian Kumar

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 inherit the results of my acts of body, speech, and mind. My actions are my continuation. — Thich Nhat Hanh

For us to respond in that way to hateful speech ... we empower the worst of us .. to create chaos around the world. — Barack Obama

You are addressed by the way you dress. Your attire reflects your sense of value or taste and of course, your speech either makes or mars you. — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

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

He knew she had been telling the truth when she told him she seldom asked for help. It was clear in her every interaction with him - in her speech , even in the way she held herself- that she was used to standing alone. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history. — John Dos Passos

And so Adam, in that his speech to Eve, uttered his faith in the promise made to her of her seed, and so in that respect Adam himself came in under her covenant. — Thomas Goodwin

Anyway, I have long had a very definite tendency to tune out the moment I come anywhere near either a pulpit or a soapbox. — James Baldwin

Speech is the best show a man puts on. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

Every true poet is a monster.
He destroys people and their speech.
His singing elevates a technique that wipes out
the earth so we are not eaten by worms.
The drunk sells his coat.
The thief sells his mother.
Only the poet sells his soul to separate it
from the body that he loves. — Tomaz Salamun

Freedom of speech means setting words free. Imprisoned and freed words are consequential. All words have consequences. Restrain and release words with respect for their consequentialness. — John R. Dallas Jr.

I had often joked in my speeches that I had imaginary conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt to solicit her advice on a range of subjects. It's actually a useful mental exercise to help analyze problems, provided you choose the right person to visualize. Eleanor Roosevelt was ideal. — Hillary Clinton

Undoubtedly they do more and viler things than those which we know and discover — Martin Luther

There is still the illusion that if we could declare corporations are not people or that money is not speech, all would be solved. Regardless of the good in those ideas, it wouldn't. — Lawrence Lessig

The peers just fill the air with their speeches.""And from what I've seen, vice versa. — Gregory Benford

Nothing shows the kind of fool you are as quick as your tongue. — Kate Langley Bosher

You're an old-timer if you can remember when setting the world on fire was a figure of speech. — Franklin P. Jones

Tell X that speech is not dirty silence
Clarified. It is silence made still dirtier. — Wallace Stevens

Lebanese freedom of speech : You get to say whatever you like as long as the authorities approve of it ... Hilarious. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Speech within the kingdom of Amazonia - run by its sovereign Jeff Bezos and his board of directors with help from the wise counsel and judgment of the company's executives - is not protected in the same way that speech is constitutionally protected in America's public spaces. — Rebecca MacKinnon

Deliberation is not a particular type of speech, but a political act of collective decision-making in consideration of consequences. — F. David Mathews

Here she is a puppet, a vessel for others to pour their speech. And it is not a man she has married, but a world. — Jessie Burton

What is style but a form of silent speech? When I put together an outfit to wear, I am putting together chapters of a story that needs to tell itself to the world in merely a minute! When I choose an outfit to wear, I am choosing a speech, a certain flow of mind-to-skin that is important to be understood. Style is the sentiment that I make without needing to speak to anyone and it's also an internal conversation that I make with myself throughout the day, I share those intimate words every time I look into the mirror or every time I look at my photographs. — C. JoyBell C.

The speech of one who knows what he is talking about and means what he says-it is thought on fire. — William Jennings Bryan

Free speech is essential to education, especially to a liberal education, which encourages the search for truths in art and science. If expression is restricted, the range of inquiry is also curtailed ... The beneficiaries of a free society have a duty to pursue the truth and to protect the freedom of expression that makes possible the search for a new enlightenment. — Norman Dorsen

Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, "This ... this ... "; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos. — Paul Goodman

Muslims (companions) misunderstood the speech of the Prophet on the day of Ghadeer. — Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

It is commonplace to say that silent films are more "dreamlike," but what does that mean? In Nosferatu, it means that the characters are confronted with alarming images and denied the freedom to talk them away. There is no repartee in nightmares. Human speech dissipates the shadows and makes a room seem normal. Those things that live only at night do not need to talk, for their victims are asleep, waiting. — Roger Ebert

I think we are in fact, losing free speech. We don't seem to care though. Many of us don't seem to notice. We will have to do a lot of work to bring back the American way to America. — Henry Rollins

Lacan wrote about two levels of speaking, one in which we know what we are saying (even when struggling with something difficult or contradictory) and another in which we have no idea of what we are saying. In this second level of speaking there are repeating words, phrases, and even sounds that function as magnets of unconscious meaning, condensing multiple scenes, times, and ideas. He called such markers in speech 'signifiers. — Annie Rogers

The woman speaks, stops, then after what must have been a long speech by the person on the other end of the line, says, " ... just remember, darling, it is pain that changes our lives." Mirabelle cannot fathom the meaning of this sentence, as she has been in pain her whole life, and yet it remains unchanged. — Steve Martin

Their silent wounds have speech
More eloquent than men;
Their tones can deeper reach
Than human voice or pen. — William Robert Woodman

Lindbergh expressed these thoughts in a splendid speech while accepting the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy at the Washington Aero Club in January 1946. Titling his speech "Honoring the Wright Brothers," he took as his theme "the way in which science was divorcing man from his old sense of independence and moral values."16 — Winston Groom

I think the adverb is a much-maligned part of speech. It's always accused of being oppressive, even tyrannical, when in fact it's so supple and sly. — Eleanor Catton

The colonel laughed, effectively halting Bingley's speech. "Uncharacteristically reclusive? Do we speak if the same man? Darcy's very character is defined by his reclusiveness! He prefers to keep his own counsel, especially when he ought to do the opposite - the bacon-brained buffoon. — KaraLynne Mackrory

In our generation, the role models were Gandhi and Nehru. We revered them. They were venerated personalities. I read almost every speech of Nehru. — Pranab Mukherjee

If speech always wins, even if it's an atomic secret that's going to be broadcast to our enemies, it's easy to make a decision. Speech always wins. But it doesn't ... Liberty doesn't always trump equality or equality always trump liberty. — David Souter

Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth. — Liu Xiaobo

I collected speech from so called "Smart", "Genius" nation... the judge is going to be made from you...

...

Don't worry "Notes of A Dead Man Sequel" are going to be one damn long journey. — Deyth Banger

When they're standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment. — Terry Pratchett

Do not speak harshly to anybody; those who are spoken to will answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful, blows for blows will touch thee. 134. — Anonymous

But in love each moment is magnified, and every gesture, word and syllable is examined like a speech by the President. — Hanif Kureishi

The light of Christ illuminates the laboratory, his speech is the fount of communication, he makes possible the study of humans in all their interactions, he is the source of all life, he provides the wherewithal for every achievement of human civilization, he is the telos of all that is beautiful. He is, among his many other titles, the Christ of the academic road. — Mark Noll

A speech should not just be a sharing of information, but a sharing of yourself. — Ralph Archbold

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

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

An organization must always remember that its objective is not getting
people to listen to speeches by experts, but getting them to speak for
themselves. — Guy Debord

I have struggled all my life with my stuttering. Not to mention all my other speech impediments. I think I have every language disorder known to speech pathologists. — Kate Forsyth

I will have you know I practiced that speech. In front of a mirror before you got here."
"So what do you think it meant?"
"I'm not sure," Jace admitted, "but I know I look damn good delivering it. — Cassandra Clare

The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman