Speakers Quotes - Page 24

• Scripture has always been a part of my life. My dad was a pastor. My mother was a speaker, writer, and teacher. I memorized Scripture from the time I was little.

  Gloria Gaither

  Mother, Teacher, Dad

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• Your brother doesn't have to be speaker for your voice to be heard in Congress

  Candace Gingrich-Jones

  Brother, Voice, Congress

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• Speakers' nerves affect them in various ways. Some tremble, some become frenzied. I lose all confidence, and suffer from a leaden oppression that makes me wonder why I ever agreed to speak at all; the Tomb and the Conqueror Worm seem preferable to delivering the stupid and piffling speech I have so carefully prepared.

  Robertson Davies

  Stupid, Suffering, Speech

  Robertson Davies (2008). “Selected works on the art of writing”, Penguin Group Canada

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• My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw - which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them.

  Nigel Rees

  Father, Taken, Mean

  "Sayings of the Century". Book by Nigel Rees, 1984.

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• Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used.

  Russell Baker

  Attitude, Speak English, Long

  Russell Baker (1990). “There's a country in my cellar”, William Morrow & Company

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• When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which - of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.

  Martin Buber

  Night, Names, Giving

  Martin Buber (2003). “Between Man and Man”, p.17, Routledge

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• I heard the term "mamisma" when describing Speaker of the House [Nancy] Pelosi, how she was speaking from that place which is kind of like a strong mother. Like when your mom says like, "put that down!" you know that is coming from a place of both love and strength. And at this critical stage in human history we need both action and caring.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Mom, Mother, Strong

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.

  Erma Bombeck

  Ifs And, Feet, Half

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• [On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.

  Madame de Stael

  Witty, Italian, May

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• Can anybody tell me why reporters, in making mention of lady speakers, always consider it to be necessary to report, fully and firstly, the dresses worn by them? When John Jones or Senator Rouser frees his mind in public, we are left in painful ignorance of the color and fit of his pants, coat, necktie and vest - and worse still, the shape of his boots. This seems to me a great omission.

  Fanny Fern

  Ignorance, Omission, Color

  Fanny Fern (1870). “Ginger-snaps”, p.114

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• we have not been impressed with any attribute of the Senate other than its appearance and manners. We have heard the best speakers: they all fire off speeches which deal with the entire subject in general terms and which do not attempt to debate, to answer opponents' arguments or offer new points for discussion. And the speeches are constantly degenerating into empty rhetoric; they abound in quotations from well-known authors or from their own former speeches.

  Beatrice Webb

  Fire, Answers, Speech

  Beatrice Potter Webb (1963). “American diary, 1898”

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• I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term "social justice.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Justice, Would Be

  "Law, Legislation and Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 9 : 'Social' or Distributive Justice, 1973.

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• it makes a great difference to a speaker whether he has something to say, or has to say something.

  Nellie L. McClung

  Differences

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• Some brains are barren grounds, that will not bring seed or fruit forth, unless they are well manured with the old wit which is raked from other writers and speakers.

  Margaret Cavendish

  Brain, Fruit, Plagiarism

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• It is frequently said that speech that is intentionally provocative and therefore invites physical retaliation can be punished or suppressed. Yet, plainly no such general proposition can be sustained. Quite the contrary.... The provocative nature of the communication does not make it any the less expression. Indeed, the whole theory of free expression contemplates that expression will in many circumstances be provocative and arouse hostility. The audience, just as the speaker, has an obligation to maintain physical restraint.

  Thomas I. Emerson

  Integrity, Communication, Responsibility

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• Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.

  Owen Feltham

  Ignorance, Men, Long

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• Well, it looks like John Boehner will be the new Speaker of the House. He is the son of a bartender, one of 12 children. He grew up in a two room home with just one bathroom, worked his way through school, became the first person in his family to graduate from college. And, sadly, fell in with the wrong crowd and wound up in Congress.

  Jay Leno

  Children, Home, School

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• In his first speech as Speaker, Boehner thanked his loved ones - tobacco lobbyists, the oil companies, the CEOs.

  Jay Leno

  Oil, Lobbyists, Speech

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• Listening is the process of creating meaning in the speaker.

  Michael Rost

  Creating, Listening, Process

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• The computer seems easy because Apple makes the products so easy to use at home. It's the simple things, like getting the TV set up or getting the speakers to work. That drives me crazy.

  Chris O'Donnell

  Crazy, Home, Simple

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• I will content myself, Mr. Speaker, with those principal motives to union; first, that we are in the rapids and must go on; next that our neighbours will not, on their side, let us rest supinely, even if we could do so from other causes; and thirdly, that by making the united colonies more valuable as an ally to Great Britain, we shall strengthen rather than weaken the imperial connection. (Cheers.

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee

  Cheer, Goes On, Unions

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1865). “Speeches and Addresses Chiefly on the Subject of British-American Union”, p.282, London : Chapman and Hall

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• if there's one thing consistent about language it is that it is constantly changing. The only languages that do not change are those whose speakers are dead.

  Rosalie Maggio

  Language, Consistent, One Thing

  Rosalie Maggio, The Women's Media Center (2015). “Unspinning the Spin: The Women's Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language”, p.33, Open Road Media

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• I'm also honored to be here with the speaker of the House - just happens to be from the state of Illinois. I'd like to describe the speaker as a trustworthy man. He's the kind of fellow who says when he gives you his word he means it. Sometimes that doesn't happen all the time in the political process.

  George W. Bush

  Humor, Mean, Men

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• Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener. The latter must prepare to receive it according to the motion it takes.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Communication, Listening, Half

  Michel de Montaigne (1980). “Essays”

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• We can speak very much to the purpose and yet in such a way that the whole world cries out in contradiction: namely, when we are not speaking to the whole world.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Way, Purpose, World

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