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When the vain speaker has sat down, and the people say 'what a good speech,' it still takes an ounce to balance an ounce.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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I do not much dislike the matter, but
The manner of his speech.
William Shakespeare
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When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another.
Samuel Johnson
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Prayer needs no speech. It is in itself independent of any sensuous effort. But it must be combined with the utmost humility.
Mahatma Gandhi
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Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs: for occasions have their revolutions, and what has once been advantageously used may be so again, either as an old thing or a new one.
Francis Bacon
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My friends, this is a wholly unprepared speech. I did not expect to be called upon to say a word when I came here. I supposed I was merely to do something towards raising a flag. I may, therefore, have said something indiscreet, but I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, in the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.
Abraham Lincoln
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It is generally better to deal by speech than by letter.
Francis Bacon
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I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech - the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice.
George Orwell
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Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters — seldom in any school of writing.
Thomas Edison
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Everyone asks for freedom for himself,
The man free love, the businessman free trade,
The writer and talker free speech and free press.
Robert Frost
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In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In ruling, be just. In daily life, be competent. In action, be aware of the time and the season.
Lao Tzu
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Believe me, nurse, the difficulty of beginning will be nothing to the difficulty of knowing how to stop. At least that's the way it is with me when I have to make a speech. Someone's got to catch hold of my coat-tails and pull me down by main force.
Agatha Christie
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I may disappoint you but I don't share the common excitement about the speech by Greta Thunberg.
Vladimir Putin
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I shall content myself with merely declaring my firm conviction that, for the seeker who would live in fear of God and who would see Him face to face, restraint in diet both as to quantity and quality is as essential as restraint in thought and speech.
Mahatma Gandhi
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It's difficult to talk to people who whisper even at home, afraid of Americans eavesdropping on them. It's not a figure of speech, not a joke, I'm serious.
Vladimir Putin
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Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time, nor does it take away the freedom of speech which proceeds from justice; but it gives to us the knowledge of what is just and lawful, separating from them the unjust and refuting them.
Epictetus
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The best and most telling speech is not the actual impromptu one but the counterfeit of it.
Mark Twain
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To A.P. Herbert about his first speech as a newly elected Member of Parliament:
That wasn't a maiden speech — it was a brazen hussy of a speech — a painted tart of a speech.
Winston Churchill
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Victor Raikes, the Tory M. P., who is an able and outspoken reactionary, made a speech which I should have considered a good one if it had referred only to Poland and Jugoslavia. But after dealing with those two countries he went on to speak about Greece, and then suddenly black became white, and white black. There was no booing, no interjections from the quite large audience—and none there, apparently, who could see that the forcing of quisling governments upon unwilling peoples is equally undesirable whoever does it.
George Orwell
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For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.
George Washington
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What is called Nothingness is to be found only in time and in speech. In time it stands between the past and future and has no existence in the present; and thus in speech it is one of the things of which we say: They are not, or they are impossible.
Leonardo da Vinci
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The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight...
Thomas Hobbes
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Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.
William Shakespeare
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Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.
George Orwell
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All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.
Raymond Chandler
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We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
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