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speech quotes

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“I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” Mark Twain, Following the Equator
“If it is not right, do not do it: if it is not true, do not say it.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;” William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” George Orwell, 1984
“He was essentially a truth-speaking man, if only he knew how to speak the truth.” Anthony Trollope, Phineas Redux
“Those who know do not speak; Those who speak do not know.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“He acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.” Confucius, Analects
“Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.” Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
“The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.” Confucius, Analects
“They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener; and so when each had said his say, my mother made them a speech.” Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
“Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, Or else my heart, concealing it, will break;” William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
“He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.” Confucius, Analects
“I believe you can speak things into existence.” JAY-Z, Decoded
“Teach me to speak the language of men.” Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
“The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.” William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale
“the cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
“Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
“Be check'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech.” William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well
“Fair speech may hide a foul heart.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
“Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says some women may feel?” Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles
“Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.” William Shakespeare, As You Like It
“Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes.” William Shakespeare, King Lear
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
“Be not too hasty . . . to trust or to admire the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men.” Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
“For True and False are attributes of Speech, not of things. And where Speech in not, there is neither Truth nor Falshood.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
“each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!” Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
“Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Sir . . . with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.” Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
“His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.” John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
“It seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control.” Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.” Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly.” Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“He was always in a hurry to speak, and seemed always to put his whole soul into what he was saying.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone; but I always speak what I think.” Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.” Plutarch, Moralia
“I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth, but never in thy heart nor in thy practice.” Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
“Immediate are the acts of God, more swift than time or motion, but to human ears cannot without process of speech be told, so told as earthly notion can receive.” John Milton, Paradise Lost
“The captain has said too much or he has said too little, and I'm bound to say that I require an explanation of his words.” Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
“When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“But then I realized that writing something is different from saying it—and that love stories are built around people’s idiosyncrasies.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

Related topics

wisdom life men listening thought silence truth words freedom action women modesty politics age falsehood heart courage woman honesty understanding

Related authors

Ludwig Wittgenstein (2)
William Shakespeare (6)
Confucius (3)
Jane Austen (3)
Robert Louis Stevenson (3)
John Steinbeck (2)
Michel de Montaigne (1)
Lao Tzu (1)
Marcus Aurelius (1)
Mark Twain (1)
George Orwell (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
J. R. R. Tolkien (1)
Leo Tolstoy (1)
Carl Sagan (1)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1)
Milan Kundera (1)
John Milton (1)
Blaise Pascal (1)
Thomas Hardy (1)

Related sources

Analects (3)
Treasure Island (3)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (2)
Hamlet (1)
As You Like It (1)
The Taming of the Shrew (1)
Following the Equator (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1)
Meditations (1)
1984 (1)
Tao Te Ching (1)
Heart of Darkness (1)
Anna Karenina (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Paradise Lost (1)
Pride and Prejudice (1)
East of Eden (1)
The Great Gatsby (1)
The Demon-Haunted World (1)