Speech Quotes - Page 20

• Early American speeches, from Washington's to Patrick Henry's, have been detheologized in history textbooks. No one has called it censorship.

  James G. Watt

  Christian, Religious, Textbooks

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• A city built upon mud;
  A culture built upon profit;
  Free speech nipped in the bud,
  The minority always guilty.
  Why should I want to go back
  To you, Ireland, my Ireland?

  Louis MacNeice

  Cities, Culture, Bud

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.177, Faber & Faber

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• Speech doesn't corrupt. Money corrupts, and money isn't speech.

  Russ Feingold

  Free Speech

  "Feingold slams Dem super PACs" by James Hohmann, www.politico.com. June 17, 2011.

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• A speech from Ernest Bevin on a major occasion had all the horrific fascination of a public execution. If the mind was left immune, eyes and ears and emotions were riveted.

  Michael Foot

  Eye, Mind, Fascination

  'Aneurin Bevan' (1962) vol. 1, ch. 13

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• Dialect or the speech of the people is capable of expressing whatever the people are.

  Sterling K. Brown

  People, Dialect, Capable

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• Everything in journalism is about the detail that makes the whole, the attempts to reproduce speech patterns while not actually quoting the whole thing the person said.

  Neil Gaiman

  Details, Patterns, Journalism

  "Ask the Author Live:Dana Goodyear with Neil Gaiman". www.newyorker.com. January 15, 2010.

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• Kennedy was significantly different than Eisenhower before him, and different from Johnson after him. So those three years were the beginning of a détente with the Soviet Union, a new feeling for peace, a seeking out of a new ally with the Soviet Union - the end of the Cold War, as Kennedy called it in his American University speech.

  Oliver Stone

  War, Years, Feelings

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I know people who are embarrassed to be American. They don't like showing their passports. It's becoming a scary place. It takes someone very brave not to be quiet, someone who doesn't mind death threats, their life being turned upside down, news cameras outside their door. There is no freedom of speech in America anymore. They are not living up to the constitution. There's so much fear in America and control.

  Gillian Anderson

  Doors, America, People

  "I'm not good at playing the game" by Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. August 27, 2005.

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• In his speech President Bush said we need to rebuild Iraq, provide the people with jobs, and give them hope. If it works there maybe we'll try it in New Orleans.

  Jay Leno

  Jobs, Iraq, New Orleans

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• One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Trying, Intangible, Feels

  Ernest Shackleton (2015). “South”, p.194, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The corporate scandals are getting bigger and bigger. In a speech on Wall Street, President Bush spoke out on corporate responsibility, and he warned executives not to cook the books. Afterwards, Martha Stewart said the correct term was to saute the books.

  Conan O'Brien

  Wall, Book, Responsibility

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• Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point.
  The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy.

  Aleister Crowley

  Sacrifice, Order, Design

  Aleister Crowley (1970). “777 revised: vel, Prolegomena symbolica ad systemam sceptico-mysticae viae explicandae, fundamentum hieroglyphicum sanctissimorum scientiae summae”, Weiser Books

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• Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,--a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Rifles, Oratory

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1206, Delphi Classics

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• They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Firsts, Hardest, Wells

  "The Poet and the World". Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 07, 1996.

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• When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Hero, Imagination

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.282, Delphi Classics

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• That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Country, Truth

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.177, David M Gross

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• The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Silence, Individuality, Hearing

  Henry David Thoreau, John C. Broderick, Robert Sattelmeyer (1981). “Journal”, p.114, Princeton University Press

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• The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Style, Oratory

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.516, Simon and Schuster

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• What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspiration, Heart, Yield

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.88, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, America, Toadstools

  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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• President Bush delivered a commencement speech at a university in Wisconsin. A very inspirational speech. Apparently Bush told the students, 'You can do anything in life if your parents work hard enough.'

  Conan O'Brien

  Hard Work, Parent, President

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• Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk into the river. Listen to the ocean.

  Rumi

  Ocean, Rivers, Silence

  "The Essential Rumi". Book translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry and Reynold Nicholson. Chapter 18: "The Three Fish", p. 196, 1995.

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• Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Believe, Office

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.143, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Some subjects come up suddenly in our speech and cannot be silenced.

  Mason Cooley

  Talking, Silence, Come Up

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• There are many prices we pay for freedoms secured by the First Amendment; the risk of undue influence is one of them, confirming what we have long known: Freedom is hazardous, but some restraints are worse.

  Warren E. Burger

  Long, Risk, Pay

  "Open The System, Don't Close It" by Edward H. Crane, www.cnn.com. November 25, 1996.

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