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Speaking of speech
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Published Saturday, August 03, 2013 @ 7:15 AM EDT
Aug 03 2013

[Lecturing to college students] was like being in a house with a whole set of very bright baboons. You expected them to burst into human speech at any minute, but they never did.
-Katherine Anne Porter

A good indignation makes an excellent speech.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A speech is made great, not from the words used, but from the ideas conveyed. If the ideas, principles and values and substance of the speech are great, then it's going to be a great speech, even if the words are pedestrian. The words can be soaring, beautiful and eloquent but if the ideas are flat, empty or mean, it's not a great speech.
-Theodore (Ted) Sorensen

Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans should do so by e-mail, which has been specially invented for the purpose, involving neither physical proximity nor speech.
-Auberon Waugh

Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.
-Garry Trudeau

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, except to encourage attendance in Christian churches; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, except to require prayer in schools; or abridging the freedom of speech, except for those questioning the Bush administration; or of the press, except that not owned by Rupert Murdoch; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, except those protesting pre-emptive wars; and to petition the government for a redress of grievance, except those we don't like.
-Gary Hart

During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
-Henry Adams

Election year is that period when politicians get free speech mixed up with cheap talk.
-J.B. Kidd

Freedom of speech in no way guarantees freedom from hearing.
-Pat Paulsen

I believe in the free speech that liberals used to believe in, the economic freedom that conservatives used to believe in, and the personal freedom that America used to believe in.
-Doug Mataconis

I want to be American. America is the coolest place on the face of the Earth. You've got freedom of speech. You've got McDonalds.
-Ozzy Osbourne

If figures of speech based on sport and fornication were suddenly banned, American corporate communication would be reduced to pure mathematics.
-Jay McInerny

If you want free speech, walk in a closet and talk to yourself.
-Howard Stern

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
-George Orwell

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
-Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

It is not enough to "have" free speech. People must learn to speak freely.
-Christopher Hitchens

Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches.
-Will Rogers

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt: speech was given to conceal thought.
-William Osler

Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.
-Lyndon B. Johnson

Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.
-Adlai E. Stevenson II

Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?
-Roger Ebert

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
-Søren Kierkegaard

Politically popular speech has always been protected: even the Jews were free to say "Heil Hitler."
-Isaac Asimov

Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech.
-Susan Sontag

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact- it is silence which isolates.
-Thomas Mann

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
-John Andrew Holmes

Speech is not free if it costs people their jobs.
-Henry A. Wallace

Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.
-Anthony Trollope

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
-Clifton Fadiman

The best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.
-Ruth Gordon

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.
-Anthony Kennedy

The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because nobody ever tries to ban the other kind.
-Mike Godwin

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting "fire" in a theater and causing a panic.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.
-Justice Robert Jackson

The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance, eternal patience with the vacuous blather occasionally expressed from behind the shield of free speech.
-Michael Shermer

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
-George Bernard Shaw

Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.
-George Orwell

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them, either.
-Gore Vidal

We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest errors that ignorance can make- we assume our standard of values is shared by all other humans in the world.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech.
-David Brin

What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to.
-Hansell B. Duckett

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

You have the right to free speech, as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it.
-The Clash


Categories: First Amendment, Quotes on a topic


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