Speech Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Whatever may be the sociological value of the legal fiction that 'all men are born free and equal,' there can be no doubt that...in its biological application, at any rate, this statement is one of the most stupendous falsehoods ever uttered by man through his misbegotten gift of articulate speech.

In 1997, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women's rights. Sadly many of the things she wanted to change are still true today.
But what stood out for me the most was that less than 30 per cent of the audience were male. How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?
Men — I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.

It's funny to read articles about Gordon Gekko as if he exists…. If you really listen to Gekko's speech, half of it makes sense…. But it's the excess, losing moderation, that destroys all…. There is nothing inherently wrong with greed as a human motivator, greed motivating evolution…. But there's a huge disconnect between the classes. It is very demoralizing to work for someone who makes a billion dollars a year while you make just barely enough to make it.

By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust.

Stand here with me with the stars and
hills for witness and in their presence
consecrate your life and your talent,
your song and your speech,
your thought and your dream to the Motherland.
O Poet, see visions from the hill tops
and spreads abroad the message of hope
to the toilers in the valley.

Ancient Indians had a far deeper confidence in living speech than in the moral, impersonal and derivative written communication. When words issued from the mouth of a sayer, they carried a personal endorsement.

Robert T. Oliver

The conflict about the meaning of free speech went on through the 1920s, Holmes and Brandeis persisting in their view and expressing it in strongly worded dissents. In one sense it was a curious performance by the two of them, for each had a deep commitment to the Supreme Court as an institution and thought that division among the justices should be avoided when possible.

Man is born with the faculty of speech. Who gives it to him? He who gives the bird its song.

[Lloyd George] said that Harding's speech on American naval aspirations made him feel that he would pawn his shirt rather than allow America to dominate the seas. If this was to be the outcome of the League of Nations propaganda, he was sorry for the world and in particular for America.

David Lloyd George

When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.

The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.

To those who know the speech of hills and rivers straightening a stream is like shipping vagrants—a very successful method of passing trouble from one place to the next. It solves nothing in any collective sense.

He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.

Companion none is like Unto the mind alone;
For many have been harmed by speech,
Through thinking, few or none.

Thomas, Lord Vaux

I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech act, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated.

Jürgen Habermas

Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or such like, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth, a primal element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them.

Listening to a speech by Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth's: everything in its place and nothing above sixpence.

The oath that I have taken is the same oath that was taken by George Washington and by every President under the Constitution. But I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.
Therefore, I feel it is my first duty to make an unprecedented compact with my countrymen. Not an inaugural address, not a fireside chat, not a campaign speech — just a little straight talk among friends. And I intend it to be the first of many.

The round-square may be impossible, but we believe in it because it is impossible. [E. E.] Cummings is a very great expert in all these, so to speak, illegal syntactical devices: his misuse of parts of speech, his use of negative prefixes, his word-coining, his systematic relation of words that grammar and syntax don't permit us to relate—all this makes him a magical bootlegger or moonshiner of language, one who intoxicates us on a clear liquor no government has legalized with its stamp.

Randall Jarrell

Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk,
speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble
of all these syllables a single word
before the purpose of speech is gone.

Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.
Their tongues are separate in speech,
And their natures as well;
Their skins are distinguished,
As thou distinguishest the foreign peoples.
Thou makest a Nile in the underworld,
Thou bringest forth as thou desirest
To maintain the people
According as thou madest them for thyself,
The lord of all of them, wearying with them,
The lord of every land, rising for them,
The Aton of the day, great of majesty.

Poetry is unfallen speech. Paradise knew no other, for no other would suffice to answer the need of those ecstatic days of innocence.

Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity.

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language. Most people in India are multilingual, and if you listen to the urban speech patterns there you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase.