Quotes about speaking
page 42

Vladimir Putin photo

“The border is a notion too. It’s a mood. It’s a culture…after living seven years on the border, and I really was speaking in two tongues—I was dual person back then…”

Tanya Saracho Mexican-American actress, playwright and showrunner

On living on the border and how it affected her life in “An Interview with Tanya Saracho” https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2014/10/an-interview-with-tanya-saracho/ in The Interval (2014 Oct 29)

Adolf Hitler photo
P. V. Narasimha Rao photo
Alec Douglas-Home photo
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa photo
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa photo
John Adams photo
Charles Stross photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. Unless this question is understood, there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution. The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about dual power.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

This fact must be grasped first and foremost: unless it is understood, we cannot advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old "formulas".
Lenin Anthology, p. 301
1910s, "The Dual Power" (1917)

Jack Vance photo

“Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?”

asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.”
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 17, section 2 (p. 657)

Carl Sagan photo

“Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

54 min 25 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

Carl Sagan photo
Ernest J. Gaines photo

“I was never threatened…I never knew anyone who was lynched. But there was subtle racism every day of my life. You could not speak to a white man unless he spoke to you first. On the sidewalk, I’d have to move so a white person could walk by.”

Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

On his experiences with segregation (as quoted in “Ernest J. Gaines: A Great American Author Pays It Forward to a New Generation of Black Writers” https://www.theroot.com/ernest-j-gaines-a-great-american-author-pays-it-forwa-1790858566 in The Root; 2015 Jan 22)

Joy Harjo photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Roy Jenkins photo

“In these circumstances it is essential we should be able to speak with sanity and authority in world monetary affairs. You cannot do this from a position of perpetual deficit.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (30 September 1968), quoted in The Times (1 October 1968), p. 6
1960s

Harold Wilson photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“It is anything but easy trying to speak of a person one knows so little about but who is nevertheless so close to me.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Tulsi Gabbard photo

“I’ve never heard him say anything hateful, or say anything mean about anybody … I can speak to my own personal experience and, frankly, my gratitude to him, for the gift of this wonderful spiritual practice that he has given to me, and to so many people.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Speaking of Chris Butler, creator of the Science of Identity Foundation https://www.chrisbutlerspeaks.com/about-chris-butler, as quoted in "What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe?" by Kelefa Sanneh, in The New Yorker (6 November 2017) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/what-does-tulsi-gabbard-believe
2017

Gabriel García Márquez photo
Alfred von Waldersee photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto photo
Smedley D. Butler photo
Fidel Castro photo

“Let me tell you a story: Once there was a republic. It had its constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a president, a congress and courts of law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

ibid., p. 89-901
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Ma Ying-jeou photo

“Pragmatically speaking, there exists no possibility of Taiwan independence. The only option (for Taiwan) is whether to reunify (with Mainland China) or not.”

Ma Ying-jeou (1950) Taiwanese politician, president of the Republic of China

Ma Ying-jeou (2018) cited in: " Taiwan's former President Ma says independence not possible http://focustaiwan.tw/news/acs/201812200018.aspx" in Focus Taiwan, 20 December 2018.
Statement made during the launch of his biography entitled ""A Memoir of Eight Years in Office", 20 December 2018.
Strait issues

James Eastland photo
Barham Salih photo
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Ayad Allawi photo

“Only one thing is prohibited these days in Iraq: to speak with President Mubarak or the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Mention the word “Arabism” and you will be accused of being an intelligence agent.”

Ayad Allawi (1945) Iraqi politician

SPIEGEL Interview with Ayad Allawi, 10 September 2007 https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-ayad-allawi-we-are-further-than-ever-from-national-reconciliation-a-504900.html

Gerard Batten photo

“We are determined to protect our freedom of speech and the right to speak our minds without fear of the politically correct thought-police knocking on our doors.”

Gerard Batten (1954) British politician

UKIP aiming to be 'radical, populist' party - Gerard Batten https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45593648 BBC News (21 September 2018)
2018

Frederick Douglass photo
Karolina Vidović-Krišto photo

“You wannabe rebellious, do what is forbidden and dangerous? Speak and spread the truth.”

written at her Facebook profile, 28th February 2018

Mona Charen photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo

“I appeal to the English-speaking people of South Africa not to allow themselves to be hurt, though I can feel their sadness. A framework has fallen away, but what is of greater importance is friendship and getting together as one nation – as white people who have to defend their future together. Now there is a chance of standing together – one free country standing together on a basis which is the desire of friendship with Great Britain.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

In response to a comment by Douglas Mitchell (leader of the opposition) that South Africa was retreating into isolation, as quoted in The New Republic https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rRI1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=wqULAAAAIBAJ&pg=5390%2C4506760, Glasgow Herald (30 May 1961)

Bonaventure photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation. The boy stands astonished, his impressions guide him: he learns sportfully, seriousness comes on him by surprise. Imitation is born with us: what should be imitated is not easy to discover. The excellent is rarely found, more rarely valued. The height charms us, the steps to it do not: with the summit in our eye, we love to walk along the plain. It is but a part of art that can be taught: the artist needs it all. Who knows it half, speaks much, and is always wrong: who knows it wholly, inclines to act, and speaks seldom or late. The former have no secrets and no force : the instruction they can give is like baked bread, savory and satisfying for a single day; but flour cannot be sown, and seed-corn ought not to be ground. Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the highest matter. Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone. No one knows what he is doing while he acts aright, but of what is wrong we are always conscious. Whoever works with symbols only is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There are many such, and they like to be together. Their babbling detains the scholar: their obstinate mediocrity vexes even the best. The instruction which the true artist gives us opens the mind; for, where words fail him, deeds speak. The true scholar learns from the known to unfold the unknown, and approaches more and more to being a master.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Book VII Chapter IX
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Johann Gottfried Herder photo

“Should there not be manifest progress and development but in a higher sense than people have imagined it? … No one is in his age alone, he builds on the preceding one, this becomes nothing but the foundation of the future, wants to be nothing but that — this is what we are told by the analogy in nature, God’s speaking exemplary model in all works! Manifestly so in the human species!”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

"This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity" ["Auch eine Philosophie zur Geschichte der Menscheit"] (1774), as translated by Michael N. Forster, in Johann Gottlieb von Herder: Philosophical Writings (2002), edited by Michael N. Forster, p. 299

Hans Reichenbach photo

“Occasionally one speaks… of signals or signal chains.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

It should be noted that the word signal means the transmission of signs and hence concerns the very principle of causal order...
The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Thomas Müntzer photo

“God speaks only in the suffering of creatures, a suffering that the hearts of the unbelievers do not have because they become more and more hardened.”

Thomas Müntzer (1489–1525) early Reformation-era German pastor who was a rebel leader during the German Peasants' War

"A Protest about the Condition of the Bohemians," p. 5
Wu Ming Presents Thomas Müntzer, Sermon to the Princes

Thomas Müntzer photo

“Freely and boldly I declare that I have never heard a single donkey-cunt doctor of theology, in the smallest of his divisions and points, even whisper, to say nothing of speaking loudly, and points, even whisper, to say nothing of speaking loudly, about the order (established in God and all his creatures).”

Thomas Müntzer (1489–1525) early Reformation-era German pastor who was a rebel leader during the German Peasants' War

"A Protest about the Condition of the Bohemians"
Wu Ming Presents Thomas Müntzer, Sermon to the Princes

Stanley Baldwin photo
Gerda Lerner photo
Jean Améry photo

“If one speaks about torture, one must take care not to exaggerate.”

Jean Améry (1912–1978) Austrian essayist

At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (1966)

Baruch Spinoza photo

“From this point we glance back to the alleged atheism of Spinoza. The charge will be seen to be unfounded if we remember that his system, instead of denying God, rather recognises that he alone really is. Nor can it be maintained that the God of Spinoza, although he is described as alone true, is not the true God, and therefore as good as no God. If that were a just charge, it would only prove that all other systems, where speculation has not gone beyond a subordinate stage of the idea — that the Jews and Mohammedans who know God only as the Lord — and that even the many Christians for whom God is merely the most high, unknowable, and transcendent being, are as much atheists as Spinoza. The so-called atheism of Spinoza is merely an exaggeration of the fact that he defrauds the principle of difference or finitude of its due. Hence his system, as it holds that there is properly speaking no world, at any rate that the world has no positive being, should rather be styled Acosmism. These considerations will also show what is to be said of the charge of Pantheism. If Pantheism means, as it often does, the doctrine which takes finite things in their finitude and in the complex of them to be God, we must acquit the system of Spinoza of the crime of Pantheism. For in that system, finite things and the world as a whole are denied all truth. On the other hand, the philosophy which is Acosmism is for that reason certainly pantheistic.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“What are you speaking, German, Brian?”

Brian Regan (comedian) (1957) American comedian

| teacher
Brian Regan Live (1997)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
William H. Crogman photo
Bret Stephens photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“This is like winning an Oscar!… As if I would know! Speaking of acting, one of my movies was called True Lies.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

And that’s what the Democrats should have called their convention.
2000s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (31 August 2004)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Anirvan photo
Philip Melanchthon photo

“What do you believe was on the mind of the ancient Romans that they called the arts of speaking humanity?”

Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) German reformer

They judged that, indisputably, by the study of these disciplines not only was the tongue refined, but also the wildness and barbarity of people’s minds was amended.
Source: Praise of Eloquence (1523), p. 66

“It takes dispassionate bravado to speak of oneself in the third person. Walter has such bravado: it is one of the chief reasons for his success.”

Walter Keane (1915–2000) American plagiarist

Jane Howard, " The Man Who Paints Those Big Eyes: The Phenomenal Success of Walter Keane https://books.google.com/books?id=WFMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA39," LIFE 59, no. 9 (27 August 1965), p. 39.
Jane Joward

Isa Chandra Moskowitz photo

“I think if you are a chef who thinks that vegan cooking has less taste and flavor than other foods than that just speaks to your own inability. Vegetables can stand on their own they don’t need all your duck blood on them, thank you. Also people tend to think vegans are emaciated self sacrificing, well tell that to my big ass jew hips.”

Isa Chandra Moskowitz (1973) American food writer

" Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Creator, Post Punk Kitchen, Author, Vegan With a Vengeance http://gothamist.com/2005/11/03/isa_chandra_moskowitz_creator_post_punk_kitchen_author_vegan_with_a_vengeance.php". Interview by Rachel Kramer Bussel for Gothamist, November 3, 2005

“The Lord … said: Unless a man shall eat my flesh, he shall not have in himself eternal life. Certain of his disciples, the seventy to wit, were scandalised, and said: This is a hard saying; who can understand it? And they departed from him, and walked with him no more. His saying … seemed to them a hard one. They received it foolishly: they thought of it carnally. For they fancied, that the Lord was going to cut from his own body certain morsels and to give those morsels to them. Hence they said: This is a hard saying. But they themselves were hard: not the saying. For, if, instead of being hard, they had been mild, they would have … learned from him what those learned, who remained while they departed. For, when the twelve disciples had remained with him after the others had departed, … he instructed them, and said unto them: It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words, which I speak unto you, are spirit and life.”

George Stanley Faber (1773–1854) British theologian

As if he had said: Understand spiritually what I have spoken. You are Not about to eat this identical body, which you see; and you are Not about to drink this identical blood, which they who crucify me will pour out. I have commended unto you a certain sacrament. This, if spiritually understood, will quicken you. Though it must be celebrated visibly, it must be understood invisibly.
Source: Christ's Discourse at Capernaum: Fatal to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation (1840), pp. 144-147

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed photo
Richard Burton photo

“A brimming pool running disturbingly deep…His voice is urgent and keen… He turned interested speculation into awe as soon as he started to speak.”

Richard Burton (1925–1984) Welsh actor

Kenneth Tynan of British theatre, in “Life: Richard Burton”

Paul Bernays photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Atal Bihari Vajpayee photo

“I believe he has a sense of integrity…Relatively speaking he has a cleaner record than most politicians in office.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

Shoba De, a columnist quoted in “Atal Bihari Vajpayee: Prime Minister of India" page=38

Mahadev Govind Ranade photo

“Thought that the discourses were everything – the place where they were delivered was nothing. He wanted his ideas to reach his countrymenand he had no objection to going wherever they were assembled, provided he got an opportunity to speak to them.”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

Gokhale's observation on Ranade’s preachings as a moderate quoted in "Mahadev Govind Ranade" page =116

“Interview: Robert Heller: Alistair Schofield speaks to Robert Heller, journalist, commentator and the author of more than 50 books on management and business strategy.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

2006
http://www.extensor.co.uk/articles/int_heller/interview_robert_heller.html online
Interview: Robert Heller (2006)

Mark Rathbun photo

“Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to leave the church, are speaking out for the first time.”

Mark Rathbun (1957) American whistleblower

St. Petersburg Times, Florida, Scientology: The Truth Rundown, Part 1 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology, Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin, June 21, 2009 http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012148.ece,
About, Media

Rajinikanth photo

“He studied in English medium and that is how he speaks such good English in movies now. If he had studied further, he would have become a doctor or engineer today.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

G M Adishesh, his friend
You can see God in him at times (22 December 1999)

Sandra Fluke photo
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury photo
Christopher Smart photo
Jeremy Taylor photo

“The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not.”

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) English clergyman

But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing.
"Apples of Sodom," part II, sermon XX of Twenty-Five Sermons for the Winter Half-Year, Preached at Golden Grove (1653)

Geert Wilders photo
Joachim von Ribbentrop photo
Alessandro Del Piero photo

“Alex is an example for all of us. He works hard in training without ever speaking out.”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Adrian Mutu, Channel4.com http://www.channel4.com/sport/football_italia/janconts06.html

Pedro Albizu Campos photo
Steven Gerrard photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo

“But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. He stands watching the merry groups, and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them. But they pass him by, chatting gayly to one another, and he cannot stay them. He tries to reach them, but his prison walls move with him and hem him in on every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grind of work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid the few—wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of human speech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there, shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. His soul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. The iron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneath is never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising to his lips, but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steel clamps. His heart aches for the weary brother, but his sympathy is dumb. Contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat, and finding no safety-valve whence in passionate utterance they may burst forth, they only turn in again and harm him. All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic.”

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Juan Ramón Jimenéz photo

“The classics of Socialist and Anarchist literature seem at mid-century to speak a foolish and naïve language to minds hardened by two generations of realpolitik.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

It was not just the sophisticates and the reformers who had no belief in the validity or endurance of the system. Everybody in what they used to call the master class, from the Pope to William Howard Taft, believed in his bones that the days of his kind were strictly numbered and found wanting. What happened instead of apocalypse and judgment was a long-drawn-out apocalypse of counterrevolution against the promise and potential of a humane civilization. It began with the world economic crisis of 1912, and the First and Second World Wars and the Bolshevik Revolution have been episodes, always increasing in violence and plain immorality, in the struggle of our civilization to suppress its own potential.
"Introduction"
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)

Koichi Tohei photo
Taslima Nasrin photo
Prem Rawat photo
Prem Rawat photo
Prem Rawat photo