Top 100 Good Speech Quotes
#1. The old expression goes, a good speech is like a woman's skirt: short enough to hold your attention, long enough to cover the subject.
Jonathan Tropper
#2. As I've been acting since I was young it's taught me to give a good speech, and, though I say so myself, I did it pretty well.
Jonathan Krohn
#3. No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.
Daniel Webster
#4. A good speech should be a like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. - WINSTON CHURCHILL
Bill McGowan
#5. Wouldn't it be wonderful if every home had good books instead of knick-knacks and plastic flowers on the bookshelves? And wouldn't it be great if every child heard good speech and received thoughtful answers to their questions instead of 'be quiet' or 'go to bed'?
Ernest L. Boyer
#6. To have much learning, to be skillful in handicraft, well-trained in discipline, and to be of good speech
this is the greatest blessing.
Gautama Buddha
#7. A good traveler leaves no tracks. Good speech lacks fault-finding.
Lao-Tzu
#8. A good speech is like a miniskirt
long enough to over all the vital parts, short enough to entice and captivate listeners.
Naa Shalman
#9. 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
#10. A good speech has a beginning, a middle and an end, the best example being, 'I love you.'
Robert Breault
#11. Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#12. It 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 Helprin
#13. George Bernard Shaw of England stopped over just long enough to make one speech in Bombay, India, started a war and 100 Indians killed each other. That's what I call good speech-making. The only enthusiasm any of our speakers can rouse is a demand to kill the speaker.
Will Rogers
#15. When the vain speaker has sat down, and the people say 'what a good speech,' it still takes an ounce to balance an ounce.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#16. All writers start out mimicking other writers. I've never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns.
Jesse Kellerman
#17. Lily," Mom said, "we need to talk."
I don't think I'm ruining the surprise by pointing out that nothing good happens when someone starts a speech like that.
Chloe Neill
#18. In speech after speech on his health care plan, the President has tried to convince us that what he is proposing will be good for America. But, how can it be good for America if it raises taxes by a half trillion dollars and costs a trillion dollars or more to implement?
Scott Brown
#19. Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better English than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident of human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.
John Steinbeck
#20. Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.
Grace Paley
#21. Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach, And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech.
Ogden Nash
#22. The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.
Robert H. Jackson
#23. Ensure that your daily chores, thought, actions, speeches and steps are taken with the purpose of giving you a good brand. Decide to be who God wanted you to be.
Israelmore Ayivor
#24. I feel high on the knowledge that I can talk as much as I want to, as quickly as I want to, in any direction that I want to, without anyone overtly rolling her eyes at me or suggesting I go to speech therapy. I'm not saying this is good pedagogy. I am saying that its pleasures are deep.
Maggie Nelson
#25. Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on one hand and the protection of free speech on the other in our digital networks.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#26. Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told.
G.K. Chesterton
#27. It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.
Herodotus
#28. It's good that the first half of the speech emphasized freedom, because George W. Bush has been the global champion for freedom. As he said, if we don't fight tyranny it will not leave us alone in peace.
Ernest Istook
#29. Television has its own award. It's called the Emmy. It's a good award. I like it. I have one. But you don't see movies like 'The King's Speech' win Oscars and then go to TV and qualify for Emmys. In documentaries, some networks have been able to game the system.
Michael Moore
#30. Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee. I prithee, dear moon, now show to me the form and the features, the speech and degree, of the man that true lover of mine shall be.
Walter Scott
#31. Cursing, telling smutty stories, smearing the good name of another, and referring irreverently to God and the Scriptures may be considered as coming under the expression corrupt speech. Our speech is to be clean, pure, and wholesome.
Billy Graham
#32. A good oration is good and a good understanding is better, but a good action in the right direction that gets the best results is the best!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#33. Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.
Jacques Barzun
#34. Being a good listener is more than just being quiet. It's reflecting back on what you're hearing. It's processing the information to formulate a question, a comment or a speech.
Shelley Moore Capito
#35. Girls, well, when God was coding their speech pattern, he deliberately left out the brevity parameter. He probably had a good laugh, and did the needful to the other kind to maintain the balance.
Rajat Mishra
#36. I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad.
Leo Burnett
#37. Wisdom does not only reflect itself in a person's knowledge of what to say. It appears also in his knowledge about how to say it and when it should be said!
Israelmore Ayivor
#38. If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech.
Christopher Hitchens
#39. There is still the illusion that if we could declare corporations are not people or that money is not speech, all would be solved. Regardless of the good in those ideas, it wouldn't.
Lawrence Lessig
#40. Napoleon is great because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it - equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press - and only for that reason did he obtain power.
Leo Tolstoy
#41. I was a good student, but a speech impediment was causing problems. One of my teachers decided that I couldn't pronounce certain words at all. She thought that if I wrote something, I would use words I could pronounce. I began writing little poems. I began to write short stories, too.
Walter Dean Myers
#42. My view is that good community management is like having good municipal government: You should be able to have dissenting opinions and so on, freedom of speech, but your grandmother should also be able to walk down the street at night without having to worry about getting mugged.
Jimmy Wales
#43. I make good money: One speech nets me more than what most people make in six months.
Alain Robert
#44. Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#45. Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.
Philip Pullman
#46. The paramanus [indivisible atoms] of mind-speech and body are effective. That is why things appear as good or bad. It shows good as being bad and bad as being good. And because of that, opinions are formed. The parmanus [indivisible atoms] of mind-speech-body themselves express opinions.
Dada Bhagwan
#47. It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Overnight success is a fallacy. It is preceded by a great deal of preparation. Ask any successful person how they came to this point in their lives, and they will have a story to tell.
Mark Twain
#49. At least in America, you have freedom of speech, which is a good thing. It's just a question of whether you're allowed to use it on 'Fox News'.
Eric Idle
#50. It is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#51. Obama isn't good off the cuff, especially when challenged; he is far better with a prepared speech.
Elliott Abrams
#52. I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.
Fred Wilson
#53. I don't like jokes in speeches. I do like wit and humor. A joke is to humor what pornography is to erotic language in a good novel.
James C. Humes
#54. He inspired no distrust; his good nature seemed all-pervading; he had the air of one who lavishes disinterested counsel, and ever so little exalts himself with his facile exuberance of speech. The Whirlpool
George Gissing
#55. Doing motivational speeches and stuff like that, that's always made me feel good.
Keke Palmer
#56. The Romney candidacy is better than it was four years ago, but it's not clear that it's good. Mitt needs to get good real fast: A real speech, real plan, real responses, and real fire in the belly.
Mark Steyn
#57. There is no such thing as realistic dialogue. If you [simply recorded] the real conversation of any people and played it back from the stage, it would be impossible to listen to. It would be redundant ... The good dialogue writer is the one who can give you the impression of real speech.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
#58. Whoever has received knowledge
and eloquence in speech from God
should not be silent or secretive
but demonstrate it willingly.
When a great good is widely heard of,
then, and only then, does it bloom,
and when that good is praised by man,
it has spread its blossoms.
Marie De France
#59. The people shall not be restrained from peacefully assembling and consulting for their common good, nor from applying to the legislature by petitions, or remonstrances for redress of their grievances.
James Madison
#60. We had an exercise in speech class in school, impromptu speaking, that I was always real good at.
John Mellencamp
#61. When you're standing in front of an audience like this that is so enthusiastic and so much behind you, it is very hard to give a bad speech. Even a bad speech sounds good in a convention hall like this.
Susan Estrich
#62. When Eudaemonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets.
Plutarch
#63. The good guys fight for freedom, justice and most words that don't put food on the table. The bad fight to scrub those words from our speech. Only problem is, both sides claim to be good.
David Gunn
#64. On the speech day, the production designer, who has a lot of say in things, and sometimes I didn't agree with him but I had to do what I was told, wanted the speech day to be all in neutral colours for the women, which was a good thing.
Julie Harris
#65. When really writing I'm not a good friend. Because writing disorganizes the social self, you become atomized. It scrambles you, sometimes to the point that I'm incapable of speech. I feel that if I start speaking, I'll lose the writing, like getting off the treadmill.
Tony Kushner
#66. Civility does not ... mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good.
Mahatma Gandhi
#67. I'm not very good with on-the-spot motivational speech," I say to her. "Sometimes at night, I'll rewrite conversations I had during the day, but I'll change them up to reflect everything I wish I could have said in the moment.
Colleen Hoover
#68. It takes three weeks to prepare a good ad-lib speech.
Mark Twain
#69. Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.
Francis Bacon
#71. Out of evil comes good, however, and the confusion of tongues gave rise to 'the ancient practice of Masons conversing without the use of speech.'
A. E. Waite
#72. In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page.
Christopher Guest
#73. What is the good of being ready with the tongue? They who encounter men with smartnesses of speech for the most part procure themselves hatred. I know not whether he be truly virtuous, but why should he show readiness of the tongue?
Confucius
#74. Delivering a speech or presentation is like cooking a meal; as long as the chef is good the cuisine doesn't matter.
Jack Canfield
#75. When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech-one does not, at least, hear how inadequate the words are.
George Eliot
#76. Being generous and kindly in speech, doing a good turn for others, and treating all alike. One like this will be praised.
Gautama Buddha
#77. Bolivian women sewed their lips shut for days. They threaded needles through their skin to stop their speech, to show what good speaking had done them.
Leslie Jamison
#78. These Norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. But they have a singular turn for homicide; their chief end of man is to murder or to be murdered;
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#79. The Jesuits were good educators, exceptional teachers. In an era and in a society where freedom of speech was not held in high regard, of course, that the discourse be focused on what they were teaching, but we were able to go beyond this framework without incurring too great a risk.
Pierre Trudeau
#80. It is by speech that many of our best gains are made. A large part of the good we receive comes to us in conversation.
Washington Gladden
#81. I will have you know I practiced that speech. In front of a mirror before you got here."
"So what do you think it meant?"
"I'm not sure," Jace admitted, "but I know I look damn good delivering it.
Cassandra Clare
#82. If a man keeps on talking negatively and we scold him, what is that tantamount to? It is like kicking the door of a latrine because it smells bad; will kicking it make it smell good?
Dada Bhagwan
#83. Good morning, bright sunshine, We're glad you are here. You make the world happy, And bring us good cheer." It was something he had heard as a child and, isolated here on Mars, he had remembered it and used it to keep from losing his power of speech.
Various
#84. Never write down your speeches beforehand; if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.
Lord Chesterfield
#85. the luxuries and redundancy of speech" - indulgences appealing to
the passions rather than to reason - that he believed "eloquence ought
to be banished out of all civil societies as a thing fatal to peace and good
manners.
Nora Bacon
#86. So sometimes the facts are good and sometimes the facts are bad, the important thing from the point of view of a principle as broad and important as freedom of speech is that the courts articulate and set forth in a very protective way what those principles are.
Floyd Abrams
#88. I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced
Joseph Conrad
#89. Now that your speech impediment has been rectified, perhaps you might say something. It would be best if it were humorous. I enjoy a good jest.'
'You are dreadfully rude,' I said to him.
He sighed. 'That wasn't the slightest bit funny.
Danielle L. Jensen
#90. The decision to go to the moon is now appreciated and associated with President Kennedy's speech, but somebody else had told him it was a good idea. It turned out to be a good commitment, but it was a unique situation.
Buzz Aldrin
#91. It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
George Bernard Shaw
#92. All the good things on this earth are trophy cups. The strong win them. The weak lose them.
from a speech by the Nazi Minister of Education
William L. Shirer
#93. So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.
Winston S. Churchill
#94. Another air traffic controller fell asleep on the job, but he had a good excuse. He was watching President Obama's deficit speech.
Jay Leno
#95. Be the best of anything you get into. If you want to be a whore, it's your life. Be a damn good one. Don't chippy at anything. Anything worth having is worth working for.'
It was her version of Polonius' speech to Laertes. With that wisdom in my pouch, I was to go out and buy my future.
Maya Angelou
#96. The attitude of the Pakistani people is very good. Whenever I release any statement or deliver any kind of speech, they respond favourably.
Abdul Sattar Edhi
#97. I was always a clown. In the eighth grade I won a city speech contest by doing an Eddie Murphy routine. I'm no good at public speaking, but if I can assume a role and speak as that person, then I'm fine. When I had to give a book report, I always did it in character.
Jason Wiles
#98. I can imagine Iceland becoming a good place to run a controversial Web site. But ... Iceland may find itself forced to defend controversial speech.
Ethan Zuckerman
#99. A leader whose speech is prepared by others is not a leader; he is just an empty and stupid bottle! Use your own ideas and your own brain; write your own speech, just like Gandhi, Churchill or Nehru! That is indeed a good ethics and a good honour!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#100. The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.
G.K. Chesterton
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