Quotes about speaking
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Audre Lorde photo

“Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“The time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us today…

… some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
Context: Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.

Cassandra Clare photo

“He speaks of you only with the greatest pride, Will”

Source: Clockwork Princess

Alexandre Dumas photo
Rick Riordan photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Source: The Issa Valley

Mitch Albom photo

“the words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Malcolm Muggeridge photo
Guy De Maupassant photo
Plutarch photo
Stephen King photo

“He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute.”

Source: The Dark Tower

Barbara Kingsolver photo
Rick Riordan photo
Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“… morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972) http://www.shalomctr.org/node/61; later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996)
Context: There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

Robert Jordan photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Jennifer Weiner photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Rick Riordan photo
Duns Scotus photo

“We speak of the matter [of this science] in the sense of its being what the science is about. This is called by some the subject of the science, but more properly it should be called its object, just as we say of a virtue that what it is about is its object, not its subject. As for the object of the science in this sense, we have indicated above that this science is about the transcendentals. And it was shown to be about the highest causes. But there are various opinions about which of these ought to be considered its proper object or subject. Therefor, we inquire about the first. Is the proper subject of metaphysics being as being, as Avicenna claims, or God and the Intelligences, as the Commentator, Averroes, assumes.”
loquimur de materia "circa quam" est scientia, quae dicitur a quibusdam subiectum scientiae, uel magis proprie obiectum, sicut et illud circa quod est uirtus dicitur obiectum uirtutis proprie, non subiectum. De isto autem obiecto huius scientiae ostensum est prius quod haec scientia est circa transcendentia; ostensum est autem quod est circa altissimas causas. Quod autem istorum debeat poni proprium eius obiectum, uariae sunt opiniones. Ideo de hoc quaeritur primo utrum proprium subiectum metaphysicae sit ens in quantum ens (sicut posuit Auicenna) uel Deus et Intelligentiae (sicut posuit Commentator Auerroes.)

Duns Scotus (1265–1308) Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher and Catholic blessed

Quaestiones subtilissimae de metaphysicam Aristotelis, as translated in: William A. Frank, Allan Bernard Wolter (1995) Duns Scotus, metaphysician. p. 20-21

Rockwell Kent photo
Ptahhotep photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Lawrence Lessig photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo
Chris Eubank photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Yohji Yamamoto photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“The word " economy" has latterly been used in various senses; the Germans give it a very indefinite signification.
Judging from its etymology and original signification, the Greeks seem to have understood by it the establishment and direction of the menage, or domestic arrangements.
Xenophon, in his work on economy, treats of domestic management, the reciprocal duties of the members of a family and of those who compose the household; and only incidentally mentions agriculture as having relation to domestic affairs. This word is never applied to agriculture by Xenophon, nor, indeed, by any Greek author; they distinguish it by the terms, georgic geoponic.
The Romans give a very extensive and indefinite signification to the word "economy." They understand by it, the best method of attaining the aim and end of some particular thing; or the disposition, plan, and division of some particular work. Thus, Cicero speaks of oeconomia causae, oeconomia orationis; and by this he means the direction of a law process, the arrangement of an harangue. Several German authors use it in this sense when they speak of the oekonomie eines schauspiels, or eines gedichtes, the economy of a play or poem. Authors of other nations have adopted all the significations which the Romans have attached to this word, and understand by it the relation of the various parts of any particular thing to each other and to the whole—that which we are accustomed to term the organization. The word "economy" only acquires a real sense when applied to some particular subject: thus, we hear of "the economy of nature," "the animal economy," and " the economy of the state" spoken of. It is also applied to some particular branch of science or industry; but, in the latter case, the nature of the economy ought to be pointed out, if it is not indicated by the nature of the subject.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section II. The Economy, Organization and Direction of an Agricultural Enterprise, p. 54-55.

Sarada Devi photo

“When someone speaks from the heart, one should listen to them”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

Mother’s Love – Swami Ishanananda http://www.chennaimath.org/category/media/page/2,

Nile Kinnick photo
Howard Zinn photo
Katrina Pierson photo

“He (Donald Trump) was speaking specifically to the reports that the father (Khizr M. Khan), who is a strong proponent of Sharia Law. And actually writing about it and how the Constitution should be subordinate to Sharia Law.”

Katrina Pierson (1976) Political spokesperson

About the statements of Donald Trump on the fallen Captain Humayun S. M. Khan's family. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/trump-katrina-pierson-khan-obama-clinton/ (August 3, 2016)

Italo Calvino photo
George Pólya photo
Maajid Nawaz photo
Giorgio Morandi photo
Albert Mackey photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“The philosophy of Kant, then, is the only philosophy with which a thorough acquaintance is directly presupposed in what we have to say here. But if, besides this, the reader has lingered in the school of the divine Plato, he will be so much the better prepared to hear me, and susceptible to what I say. And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young century enjoys over previous ones, because I believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century: if, I say, the reader has also already received and assimilated the sacred, primitive Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to him. My work will not speak to him, as to many others, in a strange and even hostile tongue; for, if it does not sound too vain, I might express the opinion that each one of the individual and disconnected aphorisms which make up the Upanishads may be deduced as a consequence from the thought I am going to impart, though the converse, that my thought is to be found in the Upanishads, is by no means the case.”

:s:The World as Will and Representation/Preface to the First Edition
Kants Philosophie also ist die einzige, mit welcher eine gründliche Bekanntschaft bei dem hier Vorzutragenden gradezu vorausgesetzt wird. — Wenn aber überdies noch der Leser in der Schule des göttlichen Platon geweilt hat; so wird er um so besser vorbereitet und empfänglicher seyn mich zu hören. Ist er aber gar noch der Wohllhat der Veda's theilhaft geworden, deren uns durch die Upanischaden eröfneter Zugang, in meinen Augen, der größte Vorzug ist, den dieses noch junge Jahrhundert vor den früheren aufzuweisen hat, indem ich vermuthe, daß der Einfluß der Samskrit-Litteratur nicht weniger tief eingreifen wird, als im 14ten Jahrhundert die Wiederbelebung der Griechischen: hat also, sage ich, der Leser auch schon die Weihe uralter Indischer Weisheit empfangen und empfänglich aufgenommen; dann ist er auf das allerbeste bereitet zu hören, was ich ihm vorzutragen habe. Ihn wird es dann nicht, wie manchen Andern fremd, ja feindlich ansprechen; da ich, wenn es nicht zu stolz klänge, behaupten möchte, daß jeder von den einzelnen und abgerissenen Aussprüchen, welche die Upanischaden ausmachen, sich als Folgesatz aus dem von mir mitzutheilenden Gedanken ableiten ließe, obgleich keineswegs auch umgekehrt dieser schon dort zu finden ist.
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Leipzig 1819. Vorrede. pp.XII-XIII books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=0HsPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR12
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Kurien Kunnumpuram photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun. Mine was bounded by time. His stretched away to the silent shores of eternity. I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Regarding John Brown, as quoted in A Lecture On John Brown http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mfd&fileName=22/22002/22002page.db&recNum=9&tempFile=./temp/~ammem_rvc6&filecode=mfd&next_filecode=mfd&prev_filecode=mfd&itemnum=2&ndocs=32

John Hoole photo

“In blaming others, fools their folly show,
And most attempt to speak when least they know.”

John Hoole (1727–1803) British translator

Book XXVIII, line 7
Translations, Orlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto (1773)

Eugène Delacroix photo

“By the time people could speak about mandatory population control in a rational way, it was too late.”

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 19 “Hello Goodbye” (p. 406)

Lin Chia-lung photo

“If we don't speak up, our voices won't be heard in the international community. Even if the decision cannot be changed (Taichung's East Asian Youth Games host city revocation), we need to get more people to understand the truth.”

Lin Chia-lung (1964) Taiwanese politician

Lin Chia-lung (2018) cited in " Taiwan must speak out against China's suppression: Taichung mayor http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aall/201807300034.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 30 July 2018

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle photo

“The calculus is to mathematics no more than what experiment is to physics, and all the truths produced solely by the calculus can be treated as truths of experiment. The sciences must proceed to first causes, above all mathematics where one cannot assume, as in physics, principles that are unknown to us. For there is in mathematics, so to speak, only what we have placed there… If, however, mathematics always has some essential obscurity that one cannot dissipate, it will lie, uniquely, I think, in the direction of the infinite; it is in that direction that mathematics touches on physics, on the innermost nature of bodies about which we know little.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

Elements de la géométrie de l'infini (1727) as quoted by Amir R. Alexander, Geometrical Landscapes: The Voyages of Discovery and the Transformation of Mathematical Practice (2002) citing Michael S. Mahoney, "Infinitesimals and Transcendent Relations: The Mathematics of Motion in the Late Seventeenth Century" in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg, Robert S. Westman (1990)

Li Bai photo

“Here it is night: I stay at the Summit Temple.
Here I can touch the stars with my hand.
I dare not speak aloud in the silence
For fear of disturbing the dwellers of Heaven.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"The Summit Temple" (夜宿山寺), in The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1947), p. 173

Donald J. Trump photo

“As we stand together with our Irish friends, I'm reminded of that proverb – and this is a good one, this is one I like, I've heard it for many many years and I love it – "Always remember to forget the friends that proved untrue, but never forget to remember those that have stuck by you." We know that, politically speaking, a lot of us know that, we know it well, it's a great phrase.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump speaking during a visit of Enda Kenny, the then Irish head of government https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/17/trumps-irish-proverb-causes-derision-on-the-web (17 March 2017)
2010s, 2017, March

Stanley Baldwin photo
Meher Baba photo
Stevie Smith photo

“Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy?
She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy.”

Stevie Smith (1902–1971) poet, novelist, illustrator, performer

"My Muse"
Selected Poems (1962)

Daniel Kahneman photo
Aron Ra photo

“Normally, anyone disreputable enough to flatly affirm such positive proclamations without adequate support would lose the respect of his peers and be accused of outright fraud; anyone but a religious advocate that is. When allegedly holy men do the exact same thing, then its not called fraud anymore. Its called “revealed truth” instead. That’s quite a double-standard, innit? Like when some minister gets on stage at one of those stadium-sized churches -to state as fact who God is and what God is, and what he wants, hates, needs, won’t tolerate, or will do -for whom, how, and under what conditions; they don’t have any data to show they’re correct about any of it, yet they speak so matter-of-factly. Even when they contradict each other they’re all still completely confident in their own empty assertions! So why do none of these tens of thousands of head-bobbing, mouth-breathing, glassy-eyed wanna-believers have the presence of mind to ask, “how do you know that?” Well, for all those who never asked the question, here’s the answer; they don’t know that! There’s no way anyone could know these things. They’re making it up as they go along. These sermons are the best possible example of blind speculation; asserted as though it were truth and sold for tithe. If anyone or everyone else would be called liars for claiming such things without any evidentiary basis then why make exceptions for evangelists? For these charlatans are obviously liars too! The clergy are in the same category of questionable credibility as are commissioned salesmen, politicians, and military recruiters.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"4th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80nhqGfN6t8, Youtube (December 25, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Noam Chomsky photo

“Roughly speaking, states are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power…”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Noam Chomsky, letter dated June 13, 1983. Published in: " The reasons for my concern: Response to Celia Jakubowicz http://www.chomsky.info/letters/19830613.htm," in C. P. Otero (ed.), Language and Politics, Black Rose, 1988, pp. 369-72.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s

Camille Paglia photo
Alexej von Jawlensky photo
John Muir photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo
John Buchan photo
Richard Whately photo
Francesco Petrarca photo
Hendrik Werkman photo

“GRONINGEN, BERLIN, MOSCOW, PARIS 1923
Start of the violet season
Reader
As we are convinced that it is not too LATE, we will speak.
Time is running, honestly.... it has become necessary now to do something, before it is too late
There must be witnessing and speaking..
.. Art is everywhere. She is thrown us people on our jackets by the birds. In every infant with weak intestines, the latent seed is laid for an artist..
Our first publication will soon be published. We urgently invite you to become a fellow reader [of the upcoming art-magazine 'The Next Call'].... We count on your DEEDS in the white season with the black shadows..”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands):
GRONINGEN, BERLIJN, MOSKAU, PARIJS 1923
Aanvang van het violette jaargetijde
Lezer..
..Aangezien wij dus overtuigd zijn dat het nog niet TE LAAT is, zullen wij spreken.
Het wordt tijd, waarachtig.. ..meer dan tijd dat er iets gedaan wordt.
Er MOET getuigd en gesproken worden.
….Kunst is overal. Zij wordt den mensch als het ware door de vogels op de jas geworpen. In elke zuigeling met zwakke ingewanden wordt de latente kiem gelegd voor een kunstenaar..
Ons eerste geschrift verschijnt binnenkort. Wij nodigen u dringend uit medelezer te worden.. [van het komende kunsttijdschrift ‘The Next Call'].. ..Wij rekenen op uwe DADEN in het witte jaargetijde met de zwarte schaduwen..
Quote from Werkman's Manifesto: ' Aanvang van het violette jaargetijde / Start of the violet season' - also known as 'Roze Pamflet / Pink Pamphlet', Sept. 1923; in the collection of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1920's

John Flavel photo

“Here you may suppose the Father to say when driving His bargain with Christ for you. The Father speaks. "My Son, here is a company of poor, miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves and now lay open to my justice. Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them." The Son responds. "Oh my Father. Such is my love to and pity for them, that rather than they shall perish eternally I will be responsible for them as their guarantee. Bring in all thy bills, that I may see what they owe thee. Bring them all in, that there be no after-reckonings with them. At my hands shall thou require it. I would rather choose to suffer the wrath that is theirs then they should suffer it. Upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt." The Father responds. "But my Son, if thou undertake for them, thou must reckon to pay the last mite. Expect no abatement. Son, if I spare them… I will not spare you." The Son responds. "Content Father. Let it be so. Charge it all upon me. I am able to discharge it. And though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures… I am content to take it."”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

The Works of John Flavel, Vol.1, "A Display of Christ in His Essential and Mediatorial Glory", 42 Sermons, Sermon Number 3, "The Covenant of Redemption between the Father and the Redeemer", Use 6.

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Statius photo

“Pleasant is it to the unhappy to speak, and to recall the sorrows of old time.”
Dulce loqui miseris veteresque reducere questus.

Source: Thebaid, Book V, Line 48 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Francis de Sales photo

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.”

Francis de Sales (1567–1622) French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j

Quoted by Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus in The Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, ch. 1, Pg. 3 (1880)

Robert Musil photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Andrei Lankov photo
Judith Sheindlin photo

“You're going to keep your mouth shut until I come to you and ask you a question, then you're going to speak; otherwise Byrd will take you outside until you understand the rules, 'cause here, I'm in charge.”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

Quotes from Judge Judy cases, Dress, stand, speak properly
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt3L8c0Dv_M&feature=related

George W. Bush photo

“But in the judgments they exercise they are most accurate and just, nor do they pass sentence by the votes of a court that is fewer than a hundred. And as to what is once determined by that number, it is unalterable. What they most of all honor, after God himself, is the name of their legislator [Moses], whom if any one blaspheme he is punished capitally. They also think it a good thing to obey their elders, and the major part. Accordingly, if ten of them be sitting together, no one of them will speak while the other nine are against it. They also avoid spitting in the midst of them, or on the right side. Moreover, they are stricter than any other of the Jews in resting from their labors on the seventh day; for they not only get their food ready the day before, that they may not be obliged to kindle a fire on that day, but they will not remove any vessel out of its place, nor go to stool thereon. Nay, on other days they dig a small pit, a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them when they are first admitted among them); and covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not affront the Divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit, after which they put the earth that was dug out again into the pit; and even this they do only in the more lonely places, which they choose out for this purpose; and although this easement of the body be natural, yet it is a rule with them to wash themselves after it, as if it were a defilement to them.”

Jewish War

Rollo May photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Halldór Laxness photo
David Crystal photo

“There is little scientific data on the point, but evidently people do speak to themselves.”

David Crystal (1941) British linguist and writer

David Crystal, "Refining stylistic discourse categories," In: G. Melchers & B. Warren (eds), English linguistics in honour of Magnus Ljung (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1994), 35-46

Jean Piaget photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Edwin Abbott Abbott photo