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Quotes about talking

319 quotes from 193 people

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I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
Vladimir Nabokov1899–1977Strong Opinions (1973), Foreword
- Genius
- Writing
Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think is creation’s.
E. M. Forster1879–1970Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
- Thinking
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
Abigail Adams1744–1818Letter to John Adams (1774)
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Notebooks (1830).
Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.
Bertolt Brecht1898–1956“Song about my mother” [Lied von meiner Mutter], from “Thirteen Psalms” (1920), trans. Christopher Middleton in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 40
Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn’t mean you’ve reached them.
Frank Zappa1940–1993Oui interview (1979)
- Writing
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.
Washington Irving1783–1859Rip Van Winkle (1819), The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820), “Rip Van Winkle”In context
- Age
It is mankind’s discovery of language which more than any other single thing has separated him from the animal creation.
Robertson Davies1913–1995On Seeing Plays (1990).
- Animals
Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.
Toni Morrison1931–2019Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
- Knowledge
I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done.
Rutherford B. Hayes1822–1893Diary (20 November 1872)
As they say in Discworld, we are trying to unravel the Mighty Infinite using a language which was designed to tell one another where the fresh fruit was.
Terry Pratchett1948–2015Relatively Einstein episode 3, “Fantasy Physics” (18 January 2005); the Discworld version of this statement appears in Night Watch (2002)
- Science
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Seymour: An Introduction (1959)
- Quotations
The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), Preface
- Philosophy
In countries and epochs in which communication is impeded, soon all other liberties wither; discussion dies by inanition, ignorance of the opinion of others becomes rampant, imposed opinions triumph.
Primo Levi1919–1987The Drowned and the Saved (1986)
- Debate
- Liberty
All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak⁠—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart1756–1791Letter as published in The Letters of Mozart & His Family (1938) translated and edited by Emily Anderson, p. 1114.
- Courage