Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.
George Eliot – Speech, Silence
They use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to disguise their thoughts.
Voltaire – Thought, Speech
Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.
Voltaire – Speech
Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.
G.K. Chesterton – Speech, Politics
The accent of one’s birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one’s speech.
La Rochefoucauld – Birthplace, Speech
There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.
Dale Carnegie – Speech
They are eloquent who can speak low things acutely, and of great things with dignity, and of moderate things with temper.
Marcus Tulius Cicero – Speech, Eloquence
Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.
Marcus Tulius Cicero – Brevity, Speech
Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.
Hannah Arendt – Speech, Politics
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Mark Twain – Speech
Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.
