Top 88 Power Speech Quotes
#1. Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#3. The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.
William O. Douglas
#4. What you say can haunt you; what you do not has no power over you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#5. For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
William Shakespeare
#7. Lion sounds that have not grown from the mouse may exude naked power ... but cannot convey any wisdom or understanding ... The initial steps on the path to courageous speech then are the first tentative steps into the parts of us that cannot speak.
David Whyte
#8. The only benefit a woman can have in talking too much is defeating a man who troubles her too much.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#9. A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.
Margaret Atwood
#10. It occurred to Keth for the first time that perhaps magic wasn't simply a matter of fires, lightning, and power in the air, if spoken words could also create such a transformation.
Tamora Pierce
#11. The reason is that they utter these words of theirs not by virtue of a skill, but by a divine power - otherwise, if they knew how to speak well on one topic thanks to a skill, they would know how to speak about every other topic too.
Plato
#12. Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives.
Robert Kennedy
#13. Instead, so long as Kennedy lived and Khrushchev stayed in power, there was steady movement toward the relaxation of tension - the American University speech, the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the "hotline" between the White House and the Kremlin.
Robert F. Kennedy
#14. Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied sould of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the same way to say a little is often to tell more than to say.
Thomas Hardy
#15. From Bill Clinton speech-
People are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power ...
Bill Clinton
#16. That your power of command
with simple language was
one of the magnificent things of
our century.
(from the poem: result)
Charles Bukowski
#17. 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
#18. Word Powers:
A beautiful bitch has four legs, not two. Even terms of, so called, endearment have unintended manifestations. Guard your grill.
T.F. Hodge
#21. The power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial been the magic power of the spoken word, and that alone. The broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech.
William L. Shirer
#22. Of course; a nurse wouldn't have been quite so bold in her speech. Not to a duke's heir. Not even to a wealthy tradesman who held the power of her employment in his too-large hands.
Courtney Milan
#23. The cold, increased by the tremendous speed, deprived them of the power of speech.
Jules Verne
#24. Each part
of speech a spark
awaiting redemption, each
a virtue, a power
in abeyance ...
Denise Levertov
#25. A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.
Peggy Noonan
#26. To understand Hitler's power as a speaker, we must consider that he was not just the bellowing tavern demagogue we always picture, but in fact constructed his speeches very deliberately.
Volker Ullrich
#27. Tis in our power
(unless we fear that apes can tutor's) to
Be masters of our manners. What need I
Affect another's gait, which is not catching
Where there is faith, or to be found upon
Another's way of speech, when by mine own
I may be reasonably conceived
William Shakespeare
#28. Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don't have a gun, freedom of speech has no power.
Yoshimi Ishikawa
#29. No man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power that strikes up from a thousand minds that acts upon him, and makes the speech.
James A. Garfield
#30. How can the power of speech remain when you lie for your own 'safeside'?
Dada Bhagwan
#31. We are all born with the power of speech, but we need grammar. Conscience, too, needs Revelation.
Fulton J. Sheen
#32. Dialogue launches language, the mind, but once it is launched we develop a new power, "inner speech," and it is this that is indispensable for our further development,
Oliver Sacks
#33. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
J.K. Rowling
#34. I am not content to entrust our free-speech rights to the good graces and whims of Congress and hope that politicians don't abuse their power.
Ted Cruz
#35. Writing with voice is writing into which someone has breathed. It has that fluency, rhythm, and liveliness that exist naturally in the speech of most people when they are enjoying a conversation ... Writing with real voice has the power to make you pay attention and understand
the words go deep.
Peter Elbow
#36. It is the beginning of all true criticism of our time to realize that it has really nothing to say, at the very moment when it has invented so tremendous a trumpet for saying it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#37. Cultivate these, then, for they are wholly within your power: sincerity and dignity; industriousness; and sobriety. Avoid grumbling, be frugal, considerate, and frank; be temperate in manner and speech; carry yourself with authority.
Marcus Aurelius
#38. She closed her eyes and willed him to lose the power of speech. Immediately and irreversibly. "Obviously, I didn't mean - " "Well. Thank you." In the entire history of time, had willing ever worked?
Sarah MacLean
#39. Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.
Benjamin Disraeli
#40. Yes, but you usually aren't ...
Well, I have to keep them covered or else you lose the power of speech
Deanna Raybourn
#41. Balanced' is a code for 'denied': a right to free speech that must be 'balanced' against so exhaustive a list of other supposed values means a right that can be exercised only when those in power judge that the speech in question is innocuous to them.
Ronald Dworkin
#42. The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more free speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens.
Timothy Snyder
#43. I am afflicted with the power of thought, which is a heavy curse. The less a person thinks and inquires regarding the why and the wherefore and the justice of things, when dragging along through life, the happier it is for him, and doubly, trebly so, for her.
Miles Franklin
#44. We also try not to harm others verbally, seeing that our speech has tremendous power. Words do not just leave our mouths and disappear; they have great effects in this world.
Sharon Salzberg
#45. Among a man's many good possessions, A good command of speech has no equal. Prosperity and ruin issue from the power of the tongue. Therefore, guard yourself against thoughtless speech.
Thiruvalluvar
#46. Knowledge empowers people with our most powerful tool: the ability to think and decide. There is no power for change greater than a child discovering what he or she cares about. (Speech about Global Warming read on the National Mall for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, 2010)
Seymour Simon
#47. The power of speech is one of the greatest powers God has given us. With the tongue, man can praise God, pray, preach the Word, and lead the lost to Christ. What a privilege!
Warren W. Wiersbe
#48. Most of the words we use in history and everyday speech are like mental depth charges. As they descend [through our consciousness] and detonate, their resonant power is unleashed, showering our understanding with fragments of accumulated meaning and association.
James Axtell
#50. I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech.
Jorge Luis Borges
#52. It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.
Herbert Hoover
#53. 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
#54. The more power you have, the less you can truly say. That's the irony.
Michael Soll
#55. Abuses of the freedom of speech ought to be repressed, but to whom are we to commit the power of doing it?
Benjamin Franklin
#56. The power of speech does not rely upon meaning. Words carry energy all by themselves. They vibrate through the air, with the intention of the speaker, shaping consciousness and touching hearts whether understood or not.
Daniel Black
#57. I believe in power of speech, and food inside prison.
Popo Santos
#58. Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.
Noam Chomsky
#59. Some people only speak of freedom of speech while they're out of power. Once they're in power, they're ruthless in suppressing the rights of others.
Barack Obama
#60. In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of.
George Henry Lewes
#61. Speech gave man a unique power to lead a double life, he could say one thing and do another.
James Harvey Robinson
#62. Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.
Aristotle.
#63. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#64. Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.
Roland Barthes
#65. Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God's power. We stutter and stammer about God's holiness. We tremble before God's majesty ...
and yet, we grow squeamish and skittish before God's love.
Brennan Manning
#66. A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.
Quintilian
#68. All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#69. The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw
#70. We sometimes forget that human invention can also be a subject of human invention: that might seem a modern notion, or a postmodern one, but novelists have taken time - sometimes time out from their realist fixations - to source and satirise the speech and power we rely on.
Andrew O'Hagan
#71. I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
James Madison
#72. For Milady was well aware that her most seductive power was in her voice, which could run skilfully through the whole scale of tones, from mortal speech, upwards to the language of heaven.
Alexandre Dumas
#73. Once the people have been deluded into believing that speeches and voting are the only acceptable tools by which to affect change in their nation, those who are in control no longer need to worry about any significant challenge to their power.
Dave Champion
#74. The vision of Van Helsing as a vampire is one before which my imagination balks; this is doubtless only a shortcoming on my part; he may have been well fitted for the role, since as we have seen he had already the power, by means of speech, to cast his victims into a stupor.
Fred Saberhagen
#75. By the effectiveness of redemption, not by impressive speech, nor by wooing and persuading, but only by the sheer unaided power of God.
Oswald Chambers
#76. I am adding another language to the spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the language of speech its old magic, its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterious possibilities have been forgotten.
Antonin Artaud
#77. 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.
Tom Wolfe
#78. She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw
#79. Slave power crushes freedom of speech and of opinion. Slave power degrades labor. Slave power is arrogant, is jealous and intrusive, is cruel, is despotic, not only over the slave but over the community, the state.
Elizabeth Van Lew
#80. Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech.
William Shakespeare
#81. The centralization of power in Washington, which nearly all members of Congress deplore in their speech and then support by their votes, steadily increases.
Calvin Coolidge
#82. Truly speech has wonderful strength and power, that through a mere word, proceeding out of the mouth of a poor human creature, the devil, that so proud and powerful spirit, should be driven away, shamed and confounded.
Martin Luther
#83. There is power in everything you say to lift you up or pull you down. There is power in everything you do to reward you or penalize you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#84. Can you make her out at all?'
Benjamin shrugged. As usual, in Cicely's presence, he was afraid of appearing inarticulate, and as usual, this fear robbed him of his power of speech.
Jonathan Coe
#85. 1CO2.4 And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: 1CO2.5 That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Anonymous
#86. There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.
(Keynote speech at Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, 2006)
Madeleine K. Albright
#87. There are many kinds of powers in the world - military power, power of the written word, intellectual power. We've tried and failed to bring peace with these kind of powers. The greatest power is the power of love.
Mata Amritanandamayi
#88. Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.
Glenn Greenwald
