Quotes on Speech

I now understand what Nelle Morton meant when she said that one of the great tasks in our time is to "hear people to speech." Behind their fearful silence, our students want to find their voices, speak their voices, have their voices heard. A good teacher is one who can listen to those voices even before they are spoken-so that someday they can speak with truth and confidence.

I have a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College in Illinois. All I did was give a speech, and now everybody has to call me Dr. Colbert.

The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change.

Laws on hate speech and hate crimes do important work in a world that has been rooted in racism and bigotry since the inception of this country, which was not founded on ideals of justice.

I, schooled in misery, know many purifying rites, and I know where speech is proper and where silence.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

Central to everything I am and believe and have written is my astonishment, naive as it seems to people, that you can use human speech both to bless, to love, to build, to forgive and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate.

Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within which very diverse relations obtain but belonging to a single category: these are associative relations.

Pleasant speech yields joy to all, and observing this, is there any need for unpleasant speech?

Death threatens our speech with futility because death is not just a biological event - it is a reality we fear may rob our living of any significance.

Speech is one of the marvels that characterize man, and also one of the most difficult spontaneous creations that have been accomplished by nature.

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.

There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

The Ogre does what ogres can,_x000D_ Deeds quite impossible for Man,_x000D_ But one prize is beyond his reach,_x000D_ The Ogre cannot master Speech:_x000D_ About a subjugated plain,_x000D_ Among its desperate and slain,_x000D_ The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,_x000D_ While drivel gushes from his lips.

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.