Speakers Quotes - Page 26

• President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner played golf this weekend. Obama’s handicap is Joe Biden.

  Jay Leno

  Golf, Weekend, House

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• We can speak very much to the purpose and yet in such a way that the whole world cries out in contradiction: namely, when we are not speaking to the whole world.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Way, Purpose, World

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• The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the 'creativity of language,' that is, the speaker's ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately UNDERSTOOD by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are 'familiar.

  Noam Chomsky

  Creativity, May, Bears

  Noam Chomsky (2012). “Selected Readings on Transformational Theory”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• In some South Pacific cultures, a speaker holds a conch shell as a symbol of temporary position of authority. Leaders must understand who holds the conch-that is, who should be listened to and when.

  Max De Pree

  Listening To Others, Effective Listening, Leader

  Max De Pree (1987). “Leadership is an Art”, Doubleday Business

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• The word "God" is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness -- a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs.

  Matthew Arnold

  Mean, Different, Consciousness

  Matthew Arnold (1874). “Literature & Dogma: An Essay Towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible”, p.12

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• Persuasive speech, and more persuasive sighs, Silence that spoke and eloquence of eyes.

  Homer

  Eye, Silence, Speech

  Homer, Alexander Pope (1809). “The Iliad of Homer”, p.1072

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• I will content myself, Mr. Speaker, with those principal motives to union; first, that we are in the rapids and must go on; next that our neighbours will not, on their side, let us rest supinely, even if we could do so from other causes; and thirdly, that by making the united colonies more valuable as an ally to Great Britain, we shall strengthen rather than weaken the imperial connection. (Cheers.

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee

  Cheer, Goes On, Unions

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1865). “Speeches and Addresses Chiefly on the Subject of British-American Union”, p.282, London : Chapman and Hall

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• The computer seems easy because Apple makes the products so easy to use at home. It's the simple things, like getting the TV set up or getting the speakers to work. That drives me crazy.

  Chris O'Donnell

  Crazy, Home, Simple

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• It is frequently said that speech that is intentionally provocative and therefore invites physical retaliation can be punished or suppressed. Yet, plainly no such general proposition can be sustained. Quite the contrary.... The provocative nature of the communication does not make it any the less expression. Indeed, the whole theory of free expression contemplates that expression will in many circumstances be provocative and arouse hostility. The audience, just as the speaker, has an obligation to maintain physical restraint.

  Thomas I. Emerson

  Integrity, Communication, Responsibility

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• Listening is the process of creating meaning in the speaker.

  Michael Rost

  Creating, Listening, Process

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• A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Half, Speech, Listeners

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• An actor is an expert at being someone else. A speaker is an expert at being themselves.

  Olivia

  Experts, Actors

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• Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical means like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.

  Albert Speer

  Country, Mean, Independent

  "Nuremberg: The War Crimes Trial". Book by Richard Norton-Taylor, Nicolas Kent, 1997.

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• In his first speech as Speaker, Boehner thanked his loved ones - tobacco lobbyists, the oil companies, the CEOs.

  Jay Leno

  Oil, Lobbyists, Speech

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• I believe that any type of education can be great, but an education about ourselves can create something wonderful. I am a comedian, but people have called me a motivational speaker. I don't really consider myself that at all.

  Andy Andrews

  Believe, People, Comedian

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• Beware of "the real world". A speaker's apeal to it is always an invitation not to challenge his tacit assumptions.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Real, Challenges, World

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• if there's one thing consistent about language it is that it is constantly changing. The only languages that do not change are those whose speakers are dead.

  Rosalie Maggio

  Language, Consistent, One Thing

  Rosalie Maggio, The Women's Media Center (2015). “Unspinning the Spin: The Women's Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language”, p.33, Open Road Media

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• If it were true that conservatives were racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, stupid, inflexible, angry, and self-righteous, shouldn't their arguments be easy to deconstruct? Someone who is making a point out of anger, ideology, inflexibility, or resentment would presumably construct a flimsy argument. So why can't the argument itself be dismembered rather than the speaker's personal style or hidden motives? Why the evasions?

  Ann Coulter

  Stupid, Self, Style

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• When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which - of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.

  Martin Buber

  Night, Names, Giving

  Martin Buber (2003). “Between Man and Man”, p.17, Routledge

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• There are only two types of speakers in the world. 1. The nervous and 2. Liars.

  Mark Twain

  Liars, Skills, Two

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• Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used.

  Russell Baker

  Attitude, Speak English, Long

  Russell Baker (1990). “There's a country in my cellar”, William Morrow & Company

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• Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sign of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.

  Owen Feltham

  Ignorance, Men, Long

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• Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are wise words when spoken, but fruitless these words are when not carried out by the speaker.

  Gautama Buddha

  Beautiful, Wise, Buddhist

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• My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw - which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them.

  Nigel Rees

  Father, Taken, Mean

  "Sayings of the Century". Book by Nigel Rees, 1984.

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• Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third — ['Treason!' cried the Speaker] — may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.

  Patrick Henry

  History, Brutus, Firsts

  Speech in Virginia House of Burgesses,Williamsburg, Va., May 1765.

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