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Speech Quotes

“We can no longer communicate with the apes by direct language, nor can we understand, without special study, their modes of communication which we have long since replaced by more elaborate forms. But it is at least presumable that they could still detect in our speech, at least when it is public and elaborate, the underlying tone values with which it began. Thus if we could take a gibbon ape to a college public lecture, he would not understand it, but he would "get a good deal of it." This is all the students get anyway.”

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Book:Leacock on Life
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“The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.”

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Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“Many people believe letters the most personal and revealing form of communication. In them, we expect to find the charmer at his nap, slumped, open-mouthed, profoundly himself without thought for appearances. Yet, this is not quite true. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope.”

PeopleBelieveMeanSelfEyeFormPurposeSpeakPowerfulReadyCommunicationConversationSpeechIdealsLettersMethodLipsAppearanceRevealingNapsUneasyUnrealityDeterrentCharmers
Book:The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
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“The interpretation of thought as ""inner speech" has taken different forms, and has been used to clarify a variety of problems--thus problems pertaining to the logical forms of thought and the connection of thought with things.”

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Book:Science and metaphysics: variations on Kantian themes
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“After watching the State of the Union address the other night [1994], I'm reminded of the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Only in this case, it's not flattery, but grand larceny: the intellectual theft of ideas that you and I recognize as our own. Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions, and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats.”

WorldLittlesIdeasStatesFormNightLeadershipVisionCasesStageFrontsSpeechIntellectualUnionsConvictionSeatsAddressesImitationFlatteryTheftAdagesDeliveryLarceny
Author:Ronald Reagan
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“I have long suspected that the power of speech is not a power at all, but a mere form of hysteria from which the living that really know the truth never suffer because they do not fear life or death as we do and can afford to be calm and silent. The frailest flower that blooms knows that it will rise from the dead in the next season's sun, breathe, feel again the dew and rain. Therefore these little ones make no such tragedy as we do of death.”

KnowsFeelsLittlesLongFormSufferingNextSunFlowerSpeechRainSeasonsTragedyMereSilentCalmBreatheDewHysteriaDo Not FearLife Or DeathPower Of Speech
Author:Corra May Harris
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“Don't have conversations taking place in empty space. Weave in background details of where the action (dialogue is a form of "action") is taking place. Don't have invisible people talking, either. Let the reader see them as they speak - their facial expressions and gestures. And by all means "cue" the speeches to the speakers.”

PeopleWritingMeanActionFormSpeakSpaceTalkingExpressionReaderConversationSpeechEmptyDetailsInvisibleBackgroundsDialogueGesturesSpeakersEmpty SpaceFacialPeople TalkingFacial Expression
Book:Writing for children and teen-agers
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“Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge.”

LittlesLongHardFormSpeakLanguageEasyKnowledgeMysteryIgnoranceSpeechAbuseMysteriousHeightVagueMistakenSpeculationPrescriptionsHindranceTrue KnowledgeDeep Learning
Author:John Locke
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“Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren, so that the message of our principal art forms, movies and television and political speeches and newspaper columns, for the sake of the economy, simply has to be this: War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind, preferably, but by no means necessarily, on a battlefield.”

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Book:Bluebeard: A Novel
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“Charles V used to say that "the more languages a man knew, he was so many more times a man." Each new form of human speech introduces one into a new world of thought and life. So in some degree is it in traversing other continents and mingling with other races. As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.”

MenWorldHumansFormUsedLanguageRaceSpeechDegreesWingsExcellenceTongueMore TimeNew WorldIntroducingContinentsHawksMingling
Author:Roger Ascham
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“[Eric]Goldman [a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law] says back in the 1990s, courts began to confront the question of whether software code is a form of speech. Goldman says the answer to that question came in a case called Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice. Student Daniel Bernstein who created an encryption software called Snuffle. He wanted to put it on the Internet. The government tried to prevent him, using a law meant to stop the export of firearms and munitions. Goldman says the student argued his code was a form of speech.”

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Author:Laura Sydell
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“Self-indulgence takes many forms. A man may be self-indulgent in speech, in touch, in sight. From self-indulgence a man comes to idle speech and worldly talk, to buffoonery and cracking indecent jokes. There is self-indulgence in touching without necessity, making mocking signs with the hands, pushing for a place, snatching up something for oneself, approaching someone else shamelessly. All these things come from not having the fear of God in the soul and from these a man comes little by little to perfect contempt.”

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Author:Dorotheus of Gaza
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“Cumulatively, American society is sliding toward a new form of 'authoritarian democracy'. Elections continue, free speech is generally protected, institutions operate in accordance with the Constitution, but the reality of state - society relations is dramatically altered by the counter-terrorist claims of emergency rule and the right of exception.”

StatesRealityFormDemocracySpeechConstitutionClaimsRelationElectionInstitutionsTerroristExceptionProtectedFree SpeechEmergenciesAlteredAmerican Society
Author:Richard A. Falk
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“I don't think that the forms of feminism that are prevailing on campus are left wing. It's a conservative form of feminism in gender politics and there [isn't] anything particularly progressive about it. That's what is baffling. You've got conservatives acting like liberals touting free speech and due process.”

ThinkingFormLeftProcessActingFeminismSpeechWingsConservativeGenderDuesProgressiveFree SpeechCampusPrevailingLeft WingDue Process
Author:Laura Kipnis
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“Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.”

TryingFormComedyPoliticianSpeechUltimateHolesBubblesFree SpeechPopeFloatsPretentiousPokeStand Up ComedyPunditsPretender
Book:Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid
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“If there is such a thing as being conditioned by climate and geography, and I think there is, it is the West that has conditioned me. It has the forms and lights and colors that I respond to in nature and in art. If there is a western speech, I speak it; if there is a western character or personality, I am some variant of it; if there is a western culture in the small-c , anthropological sense, I have not escaped it. It has to have shaped me. I may even have contributed to it in minor ways, for culture is a pyramid to which each of us brings a stone.”

IfsThinkingWayMayArtCharacterLightFormCultureSpeakColorPersonalitySpeechStonesWestClimateWesternMinorsGeographyPyramidsWestern CultureLight And Color
Book:The American West as Living Space
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“Will his work survive? Alas, I worry that it will not. As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself. Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land.”

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Author:Pat Conroy
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“Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.”

PeopleYearsChildrenFormMotherThreeLostSpeakLossAnswersHalfFiveImagineInformationKissingSpeechLosingCurrentsMotherhoodNineGhostFive YearsThree YearsTranslationsFive Year OldsThree Year OldsLosing A Child
Book:Black Glass: Short Fictions
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“What’s happened so far? Coyotes evolved limited powers of speech. Worms developed teeth and became aggressive and territorial. Snakes grew wings and developed a new form of metamorphosis. Some of us developed powers. So far there’s been a lot of strange, but not a lot of stupid. This, though, this”—she aimed her finger at the carcass of the monstrosity—“is just stupid.”

FormHappenedStupidStrangeGrewSpeechWingsFingersTeethAggressiveSnakesWormsMetamorphosisTerritorialCoyotesMonstrosityPower Of Speech
Author:Michael Grant
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“By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal. Our evolutionary, linguistic beacon.”

ArtFormPoetryCertainGoalAnimalFailingPoetPoliticianSpeechEntertainmentKingdomsPoetry IsInferiorsDoomSalesmanBeaconsForfeitCharlatansArticulationAnimal Kingdom
Author:Joseph Brodsky
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