Pericles commenting the participation of Athenian citizens in politics, as quoted in Models of Democracy (2006) by David Held, Stanford University Press, p. 14. Book II, chapter 40.
“We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper.”
George Bernard Shaw (1909)
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G. K. Chesterton 229
English mystery novelist and Christian apologist 1874–1936Related quotes
“Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it.”
Speech at the banquet for Grand Duke Alexis, 11 November 1871 at the Revere House Hotel in Boston, p. 102 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=YRmn-_vXZ58C&pg=PA102&dq=persuaded
Cf. George Eliot 1879: Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact
Variant: Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
Source: Impressions of Theophrastus Such, Ch, 4 (1879); comparable to. James Russell Lowell 1871: Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it. https://books.google.de/books?id=YRmn-_vXZ58C&pg=PA102&dq=persuaded