Speech Quotes - Page 19

• Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Vices, Amplification

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.56, Modern Library

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• Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

  Aristotle

  Character, Mind, Three

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• PLAIN SUPERFICIALITY is the character of a speech, in which any two points being taken, the speaker is found to lie wholly with regard to those two points.

  Lewis Carroll

  Lying, Taken, Character

  Lewis Carroll (1996). “The Complete Illustrated Lewis Carroll”, p.1018, Wordsworth Editions

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• I have heard articulate speech produced by sunlight I have heard a ray of the sun laugh and cough and sing! … I have been able to hear a shadow, and I have even perceived by ear the passage of a cloud across the sun's disk.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Laughter, Clouds, Laughing

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• Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.

  George Santayana

  Men, Long, Beard

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

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• Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Music, Forever, Speak

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.190, Graphic Arts Books

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• It is poverty's speech that seeks us out the most.
  It is older than the oldest speech of Rome.
  This is the tragic accent of the scene.

  Wallace Stevens

  Rome, Poverty, Scene

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.283, Knopf

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• Whatever is spoken of acquires a certain existence.

  Mason Cooley

  Certain, Existence, Acquire

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• One thinking it is right to speak all things, whether the word is fit for speech or unutterable.

  Sophocles

  Thinking, Speak, Speed

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• Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.

  John Dos Passos

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

  John Dos Passos (1988). “John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose”

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• When a tongue fails to send forth appropriate shafts, there might be a word to act as healer of these.

  Aeschylus

  Might, Tongue, Failing

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• A layman will no doubt find it hard to understand how pathological disorders of the body and mind can be eliminated by 'mere' words. He will feel that he is being asked to believe in magic. And he will not be so very wrong, for the words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic. But we shall have to follow a roundabout path in order to explain how science sets about restoring to words a part at least of their former magical power.

  Sigmund Freud

  Believe, Order, Magic

  Sigmund Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1953). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: A case of hysteria, Three essays on sexuality, and other works”

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• And from the first declension of the flesh
  I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
  Into the stony idiom of the brain.

  Dylan Thomas

  Thoughtful, Men, Thinking

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (2003). “The Poems of Dylan Thomas”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

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• He [Roosevelt] has made some speeches that indicate that he is going quite beyond anything that he advocated when he was in the White House, and has proposed a program which is absolutely impossible to carry out except by a revision of the Constitution.

  William Howard Taft

  White, House, Revision

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• The arts of speech are rhetoric and poetry. Rhetoric is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination; poetry that of conducting a free play of the imagination as if it were a serious business of the understanding.

  Immanuel Kant

  Art, Play, Imagination

  Immanuel Kant (2013). “Kant's Critiques”, p.691, Simon and Schuster

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• ... whatever men do or know or experience can make sense only to the extent that it can be spoken about. There may be truths beyond speech, and they may be of great relevance to man in the singular, that is, to man in so far as he is not a political being, whatever else he may be. Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves.

  Hannah Arendt

  Truth, Moving, Men

  Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.4, University of Chicago Press

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• The whole art of the political speech is to put 'nothing' into it. It is much more difficult than it sounds.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Art, Political, Sound

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• There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Player, Action, Language

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• Certain anthropologists hold that man, having discovered tools, ceased to evolve biologically. Animals, never having discovered them, continue to fashion drills out of their beaks, oars out of their hind feet, wings out of their forefeet, suits of armor out of their hides, levers out of their horns, saws out of their teeth. Whether this be true or not, all authorities agree that man is the tool-using animal. It sets him off from the rest of the animal kingdom as drastically as does speech.

  Stuart Chase

  Fashion, Animal, Men

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• Peace depends upon compromise among peoples who must live together long after our speeches are over, long after our votes have been tallied.

  Barack Obama

  Long, Together, Compromise

  Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. September 21, 2011.

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• Fill your mouth with marbles and make a speech. Every day reduce the number of marbles in your mouth and make a speech. You will soon become an accredited public speaker -- as soon as you have lost all your marbles.

  Brooks Hays

  Time, Numbers, Mouths

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• Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.

  Terry Eagleton

  Everyday, Ordinary, Literature

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.2, John Wiley & Sons

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• Punk to me was a form of free speech. It was a moment when suddenly all kinds of strange voices that no reasonable person could ever have expected to hear in public were being heard all over the place.

  Greil Marcus

  Voice, Strange, Kind

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• When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's government fell in May 1940, the nation turned to Churchill. At last, his unique qualities were brought to bear on a supreme challenge, and with his unshakable optimism, his heroic vision, and above all, his splendid speeches, Churchill roused the spirit of the British people.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Unique, Government, People

  Gretchen Rubin (2004). “Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life”, p.17, Random House

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• The time has now come to amend the Constitution to restore freedom of speech for America's people of faith.

  Ralph E. Reed, Jr.

  Christian, Religious, America

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