Quotes About Speech

If a university official's letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech crimes before she's given the speech - which then leads to Facebook postings demanding that Ann Coulter be hurt, a massive riot and a police-ordered cancellation of the speech - is not hate speech, then there is no such thing as hate speech.

The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.

Our job isn't to defend freedom of speech, but without freedom of speech we are dead. We can't live in a country without freedom of speech. I prefer to die than live like a rat.

Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like.

Because of the free speech clause in the First Amendment, which is very clear, "The government shall make no law abridging freedom of speech," and it literally is about political speech. You can say anything you want about politics, a candidate, and the government cannot stop you. And the Democrats hate that.

Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license," and they will define freedom out of existence.

If you're offended, what the Supreme Court has said the answer to speech you do not like is not less speech, it's more speech. There are many people in America who don't get that.

Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing more.

Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet toits god of art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as the ethically minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought.

It is not speech or tool making that distinguishes us from other animals, it is imagination....Of what use are speech sounds and tools without an inspiration toward perfectibility, without a sense that we can create or construct a history.

Music has been called the speech of the angels; I will go farther and call it the speech of God Himself.

Aesthetic freedom is like free speech; it is, indeed, a form of free speech.

"Children, don't speak so coarsely," said Mr Webster, who had a vague notion that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters' speech, and that a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.

If there were some solitary or feral man, the passions of the soul would be sufficient for him; by them he would be conformed to things in order that he might have knowledge of them. But because man is naturally political and social, there is need for one man to make his conceptions known to others, which is done with speech. So significant speech was needed if men were to live together. Which is why those of different tongues do not easily live together.

Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech.

If someone offends you by speech, you must learn to defend yourself by speech.

I remember somebody saying something to me about Frost/Nixon, when Anthony Hopkins does his famous speech, and the difference in the way Anthony did it was to dramatize, essentially, what was a documentary-style version of that speech. I remember someone saying to me, "There is artistic liberty."

In my view, madness is a place. You go. You come back. And I think we all take turns being the mental patient. Without a touch of crazy, literature can be a desolate place. In the current climate of careful speech, even fearful speech, smoke-free film scripts, thought-free songs, and child-proof locks on American minds, the oft-repeated lament of the arts is "Where have all those wonderful madmen gone?"

Among a man's many good possessions, A good command of speech has no equal. Prosperity and ruin issue from the power of the tongue. Therefore, guard yourself against thoughtless speech.

Look at what's happening on campuses for free speech. They're literally, literally limiting what people can say, under the guise of preventing people from getting hurt feelings. They are limiting constitutionally protected speech to save people from being offended or hurt. And so, denying people freedom is portrayed as a wonderful thing. That's how the left seduce people.

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels - a leaf feels, a storm feels - what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

Take free speech: most of the tough cases on free speech involve very unpleasant people saying very obnoxious things.

I never prepare a speech. I never think when I give a speech, except for "don't embarrass yourself or others," meaning "remember the names of the people you have to thank."

True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be; or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.

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

Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more - it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.

In rendering its decision in our case, the Supreme Court equated money with speech because these days it takes the first to make yourself heard.

A spiritual Christian therefore is one whose spirit is led by God's Spirit... Perhaps their speech does convey truth, but without the quickening of the Holy Spirit even truth is of small advantage.

Do not use the sharpness of your speech on your mother who taught you how to speak.

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.

Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand.

All Americans value the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, and I believe this is essential for our continued way of life. But with this freedom comes responsibility. That responsibility has been abdicated here by some in the media and some in the government.

While we generally believe in free speech and giving everyone as much ability to speak as possible, in practice there are lots of barriers to that, whether it's legal restrictions, technological restrictions or you can't share what you want if you don't have access to the internet.

I don't rely on the media. I usually average one speech a day for 25 years. People know me because I'm out there.

Islam doesn't try to destroy cultures; it cleans them up. You can keep your language but get rid of your racist speech. You can keep your style of cooking, but get rid of alcohol. You can keep your cultural dresses, but keep your modesty on the highest level.

And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.

To sew is to pray. Men don't understand this. They see the whole but they don't see the stitches. They don't see the speech of the creator in the work of the needle. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman's eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.

President Obama gave a big speech on climate change. He believes global warming is getting worse because apparently he's sweating a lot more during his second term

Silence is the speech of the spiritual seeker.

The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.

The best thing Clinton could do — I think I wrote him a letter about this, but I'm not sure — is to shut up. Every time I turn that radio on, there's Clinton, making a speech. And he makes speeches on a subject he doesn't know anything about. He has no discipline.

All art speaks in signs and symbols. No one can explain how it happens that the artist can waken to life in us the existence that he has seen and lives through. No artistic speech is the adequate expression of what it represents; its vital force comes from what is unspoken in it.

Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.

We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it.

After speech, silence is the greatest power in the world.

Speech is too often not the art of concealing thought, but of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal.