Speaking Quotes

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
― Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.”
― Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“Sometimes not speaking says more than all the words in the world.”
― Colleen Hoover, Ugly Love

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.”
― Dr Roopleen, Words to inspire the winner in YOU

“People should know about us. Girls who write their pain on their bodies. ~Louisa”
― Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces

“Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.”
― Tarjei Vesaas, The Boat in the Evening

“Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.

Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things.

Their language has been lost.

But not the gestures.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“Clearly she was expected to say something, but panic at having to speak stole the thoughts from her head.”
― Shannon Hale, The Goose Girl

“Men of few words are the best men."

(3.2.41)”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speak by something outside himself-like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.”
― Jean Kerr

“Speak to me: I will spend my lifetime trying to understand you.”
― Kamand Kojouri

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

“We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence and start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Why do people so often keep on speaking without ever saying anything? Words so often disappear furtively, as if they had never existed. They don’t stir any strings in our minds or thrill our emotions. They leave no trace in our memory and vanish simply like birds in the airy void of the sky. ("Words flew away like birds" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“My heart is burning a hole in my chest and every time you speak to me, it keeps sinking, and I'm left with nothing but ashes. I wish she were talking to me, because the more she speaks to me, the more my heart flutters like a rising phoenix.
-Karen Quan and Jarod Kintz”
― Karen Quan, liQUID PROse QUOtes

“Yawns are not the only infectious things out there besides germs.

Giggles can spread from person to person.

So can blushing.

But maybe the most powerful infectious thing is the act of speaking the truth.”
― Vera Nazarian

“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity.”
― Roy Bennett

“We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not garrulous. They could not communicate themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We have already grown beyond whatever we have words for. In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it seems, was devised only for the average medium, communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized himself by speaking.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Don't bother to argue anything on the Internet. And I mean, ANYTHING.... The most innocuous, innocent, harmless, basic topics will be misconstrued by people trying to deconstruct things down to the sub-atomic level and entirely miss the point.... Seriously. Keep peeling the onion and you get no onion.”
― Vera Nazarian

“who did I think we were.
who did I think
I could make you.

this is the oldest mistake,
to confuse wanting
with magic. silence is the undoing
of every spell, and we are experts
in the unsaid. even now, I forget
to put us in past tense. as if
the air in this city were the same.
as if love is anything like its speaking.”
― Marty McConnell Emily Kagan Trenchard

“A speaker should approach his preparation not by what he wants to say, but by what he wants to learn.”
― Todd Stocker

“It's good to see the snakes revealing themselves. They weren't actually hidden at all. People hide behind the masks, but eventually you see them for who they truly are.”
― Amaka Imani Nkosazana, Heart Crush

“I think every immigrant in this country knows that you can eat English and digest it so well that you shit it out, and to some people, you will still not speak English.”
― Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans

“O yes youwl want to think on that you dont want your mouf to walk you where your feet dont want to go.”
― Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker

“All great speakers were bad speakers at first.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson