Speech Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

'Tis not to make me jealous
To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.

William Shakespeare

On the Capitol attack:

I had nothing to do with that, other than they asked me to make a speech.

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.

There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.

A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,Mthat was what distinguished him.

Henry David Thoreau

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

And he sang to them, now in the Elven tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term "unconditional surrender."The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech--in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies.

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

I may disappoint you but I don't share the common excitement about the speech by Greta Thunberg.

The plants... are the plainest speech of the earth; every new leaf, every remarkable flower is some mystery which is trying to reveal itself, and which remains motionless and dumb only because from very joy and love it can neither move nor speak.

I do not much dislike the matter, but
The manner of his speech.

William Shakespeare

Who ever heard a theologian preface his creed, or a politician conclude his speech with an estimate of the probable error of his opinion.

Bertrand Russell

Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association.

The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.

Rabindranath Tagore

A figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

G. K. Chesterton

The truth thy speech doth show, within my heart reproves the swelling pride.

In Italian: Lo tuo ver dir m'incuora Buona umilta e gran tumor m'appiani.

Dante Alighieri

Send me, Almighty, I petition,
In porticoes or at a ball
No bonneted academician,
No seminarist in a yellow shawl!
No more than in red lips unsmiling
Can I find anything beguiling
In grammar-perfect Russian speech.
What purist magazines beseech,
A novel breed of belles may heed it,
And bend us (for my life of sin)
To strict grammatic discipline,
Prescribing meter, too, where needed;
But I - what is all this to me?
I like things as they used to be

Alexander Pushkin

My reaction is that free speech not only lives, it rocks!

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.

That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech.

For every man's nature is concealed with many folds of disguise, and covered as it were with various veils. His brows, his eyes, and very often his countenance, are deceitful, and his speech is most commonly a lie.

It is not proper either to have a blunt sword or to use freedom of speech ineffectually.
Neither is the sun to be taken from the world, nor freedom of speech from erudition.

The best and most telling speech is not the actual impromptu one but the counterfeit of it.