Popular quotes about Speech! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 31
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.
Voltairine de CleyreA mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.
QuintilianAs liberty of thought is absolute, so is liberty of speech, which is 'inseparable' from the liberty of thought. Liberty of speech, moreover, is essential not only for its own sake but for the sake of truth, which requires absolute liberty for the utterance of unpopular and even demonstrably false opinions.
Gertrude HimmelfarbThe remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.
Anthony KennedyThat is nice, Mr. Morgan. Because in response to your tough-guy speech, I, in turn, wouldโve had to give you my tough-girl speech, about where, exactly, federal prosecutors who come to my office looking for assistance can stick their obstruction of justice threats
Julie JamesIn terms of political contributions, the free speech rights of corporations I dont think deserve the same protections as the free speech rights of real living, breathing, voting humans.
Chris CoonsIn making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
AristotleIn a strange way, Hillary Clinton was helped and victimized by Barack and Michelle Obama.Michelle Obama was probably better than Barack Obama, if you think about it.Her speech is a masterful, masterful speech. And she delivered it in a persuasively conversational tone.
Mark ShieldsThe basis of the First Amendment is the hypothesis that speech can rebut speech, propaganda will answer propaganda, free debate of ideas will result in the wisest governmental policies.
Fred M. VinsonThe meaning of what is said is according to the motive for saying it: because things are not subject to speech, but speech to things. Therefore we should take account of the motive of the lawgiver, rather than of his very words.
Thomas AquinasThe court has said you are entitled to robust speech on public sidewalks, even insulting speech.
Jay SekulowThe Libertarian position on the freedom of speech is a strong support of freedom of speech, and we oppose government intervention in controlling what is or is not moral.
Michael BadnarikEvents don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.
David FrumThe relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
George OrwellI 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."
Roger BallenAt the State of the Union address last night, President Obama made history by using the words transgender, lesbian, and bisexual in that speech. It was the part of the speech where he was just reading Craigslist personals.
Conan O'BrienThe nation relies upon public discussion as one of the indispensable means to attain correct solutions to problems of social welfare. Curtailment of free speech limits this open discussion. Our whole history teaches that adjustment of social relations through reason is possible when free speech is maintained.
Stanley Forman ReedLife is more than thought: what a man feels, and what his senses awaken in him, are more indispensable to his life's fullness than subsequent reflection on their significance. Both Stirner and Nietzsche have elaborated Faust's opening speech in which he bemoans his wasted years in academia: this speech is Goethe's own impeachment of Kant and Hegel . Philosophy proceeds always under the risk of making a fetish of thinking.
John CarrollTwo Soviets . . . were talking to each other. And one of them asked, "What's the difference between the Soviet Constitution and the United States Constitution?" And the other one said, "That's easy. The Soviet Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of gathering. The American Constitution guarantees freedom after speech and freedom after gathering."
Ronald ReaganTrue 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.
Thomas HobbesI didn't go to college. I got tired of it. I didn't want to take ballroom dance taught by a former drill sergeant in the WACs. I didn't like flunking speech, me, flunking speech. But I realized sometime later, okay, I don't have a piece of paper that says I've been educated, so I'm gonna have to be able to demonstrate that I'm educated. So I began self-teaching. It was all related to desire.
Rush LimbaughMichelle Obama gives a speech, and everyone loves it. It's fantastic. They think she's absolutely great. My wife, Melania, gives the exact same speech... And people get on her case.
Donald TrumpOne of the panelists on CNN, after the Hillary Clinton commencement speech, literally started crying, "I can't believe, I can't believe the election actually happened and she lost." I don't need to see that. I don't need to see a bunch of whimpering leftists who themselves are incapable of grounding themselves in reality, whining and moaning.
Rush LimbaughWhen speech comes from a quiet heart, it has the strength of the orchid, and the fragrance of rock.
Stephen MitchellMy advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application-not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech-and learn them so well that words become works.
Seneca the YoungerThey ended every speech with the word hiro, which means: like I said. Thus each man took responsibility for intruding into the inarticulate murmur of the spheres. To hiro they added the word koue, a cry of joy or distress, according to whether it was sung or howled. Thus they essayed to piece the mysterious curtain which hangs between all talking men: at the end of every utterance a man stepped back, so to speak, and attempted to interpret his words to the listener, attempted to subvert the beguiling intellect with the noise of true emotion.
Leonard CohenI think actually that the speech work I do is fine. It's important, because I try to help people think about what's going on and organize their lives accordingly.
William J. ClintonFree speech gives us the ability to react vigorously with effective arguments and expose the weakness and misdirection of the other side's claims.
Rush LimbaughA 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.
Watchman NeeIt was a good speech, but the reaction was due to the fact that politics are madness, and even if one does not know it, a country in electoral season experiences flares of lunacy like the great storms that sometimes march across the golden surface of the sun.
Mark HelprinThere are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!
Jean de la BruyereI write in order to understand the images. Being what my agent . . . somewhat ruefully calls a language playwright, is problematic because in production, you have to make the language lift off the page. But a good actor can turn it into human speech. I err sometimes toward having such a compound of images that if an actor lands heavily on each one, you never pull through to a larger idea. That's a problem for the audience. But I come to playwriting from the visual world - I used to be a painter. I also really love novels and that use of language. But it's tricky to ask that of the theatre.
Ellen McLaughlinSpeech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.
Abraham Joshua HeschelI don't rely on the media. I usually average one speech a day for 25 years. People know me because I'm out there.
Joe ArpaioI will try and remember always to approach God in secret with as much reverence in speech, posture, and behavior as in public. Help me, Thou who knowest my frame and pitiest as a father his children.
David LivingstoneI would rather put up with Rush Limbaugh and live in a country where we all do have freedom of speech.
Bill MaherI give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, "You can like Mozart and ice hockey..." - and then I used to say "golf," but Tiger took over golf! - "and Picasso and still be as black as the ace of spades."
Henry Louis GatesSpeech remains as a slave to you, but the moment it leaves your mouth, you become its slave.
Ibn Qayyim Al-JawziyyaSomething really big happened in the world's wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I'm always struck that Facebook, Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, high-speech broadband, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago.
Thomas FriedmanHamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty, and no freedom of speech or press.
Dennis PragerWhen the ACLU took my case and we got a ruling I think, for the first time, they could - the Congress could put out the report internally but they couldn't put it out at taxpayers' expense around the country. And I felt odd about that because I, in a way, I was interfering with free speech, but then, you can't always win.
Nat Hentoff