Quotes about speech
page 15

Yvonne Vera photo

“If speaking is still difficult to negotiate, then writing has created a free space for most women -much freer than speech. The book is bound, circulated, read. It retains its autonomy much more than a woman is allowed in the oral situation”

Yvonne Vera (1964–2005) Zimbabwean writer

Opening Spaces: An Anthology of Contemporary African Women's Writing, August 11, 2008 https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Spaces-Anthology-Contemporary-African/dp/0435910108

Women, Books, Reading
Päivi Räsänen photo

“I will defend my right to confess my faith, so that no one else would be deprived of their right to freedom of religion and speech. I hold to the view that my expressions are legal, and they should not be censored. I will not back down from my views. I will not be intimidated into hiding my faith.”

Päivi Räsänen (1959) Finnish politician

Source: The Persecution of a Finnish Parliamentarian https://www.ncregister.com/news/the-persecution-of-a-finnish-parliamentarian (December 15, 2020)

Faith, Religion, Freedom
Douglas Murray photo

“Disagreement is not oppression. Argument is not assault. Words – even provocative or repugnant ones – are not violence. The answer to speech we do not like is more speech.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

Source: The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019)

Kate Bush photo

“Stepping out, off the page, into the sensual world.
And then our arrows of desire rewrite the speech...”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Source: Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

World
John McDonnell photo

“I would swim through vomit to vote against this bill. And listening to some of the nauseating speeches in support of it, I might have to.”

John McDonnell (1951) British politician (born 1951)

Source: A profile of John McDonnell - new shadow chancellor https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34245371 BBC News (14 September 2015)

Support
Edgar Guest photo

“I fancy I hear them talking there
In an open boat, and the speech is fair.
And the boy is learning the ways of men
From the finest man in his youthful ken.
Kings, to the youngster, cannot compare
With the gentle father who's with him there.
And the greatest mind of the human race
Not for one minute could take his place.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: All That Matters (1922), p.36 - A Boy And His Dad, stanza 2.

Men, Youth, Way, Boy
Louise Glück photo

“The poem will not survive on content but through voice. By voice I mean the style of thought, for which a style of speech never convincingly substitutes.”

Louise Glück (1943–2023) American poet

Source: As quoted in "Poet Laureate: Louise Glück and the Public Face of a Private Artist" https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/opinion/editorial-observer-poet-laureate-louise-gluck-public-face-private-artist.html by Andrew Johnston, The New York Times (November 4, 2003)

“I feel so sad. We begged you to stop amplifying and normalising hatred and racism. But you told us we were 'politically correct' and 'freedom of speech' was more important. The more you gave the far-right a platform, the more powerful they got. We begged you.”

Osman Faruqi pakistan-born Australian political journalist

Source: 14 March 2019 https://twitter.com/oz_f/status/1106419337567428608

Sadness, Feeling, Freedom
Wang Wenbin photo

“Freedom of speech cannot be a reason to incite racial or cultural discrimination and tear society apart. We hope Sweden can earnestly respect the religious beliefs of minority groups, including Muslims.”

Wang Wenbin (1971) Chinese diplomat

Wang Wenbin (2022) cited in " Respect religious beliefs of Muslims, China tells Sweden https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220420-respect-religious-beliefs-of-muslims-china-tells-sweden/" on Middle East Monitor, 20 April 2022.

Hope, Tear, Freedom
Aimee Mann photo

“Though you pay for the hands they're shaking
The speeches and the mistakes they're making
As they struggle with the undertaking
Of simple thought What you want, you don't know
You're with stupid now
What you know, you don't want to know
You're with stupid now.”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"You're With Stupid Now"
Song lyrics, I'm with Stupid (1995)

Stupidity
Wallace Stevens photo

“If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,

Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost

Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.

He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;

As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.

It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.

It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.

If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolness

A vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit"
Transport to Summer (1947)

God, Color, Star, Light
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Burns's gifts, expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All kinds of gifts: from the gracefulest utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight; all was in him.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Passion

“WHO WAS J. F. LEHMANN?
This book postulates that Adolf Hitler made a subtle, but all-important shift from proselytizing the myth of Germans as the oppressed victims of an “international Jewish conspiracy” to that of the superior race and oppressor because of J. F. Lehmann. It is not until after J. F. Lehmann brought Hitler the infamous Baur-Fischer-Lenz book on eugenics that Hitler’s speeches shifted from the stab-in-the-back myth, or the “Dolchstoßlegende,” with Germans as the oppressed victims of betrayal, to the eugenic propaganda of Germans as the pinnacle of white-supremacy. Weakness and superiority are incompatible attributes, and J. F. Lehmann is responsible for the shift away from the weakness inherent in victimhood to a racial superiority. Thus, it begs to question, who was this pivotal figure in Adolf Hitler's life, and why is his name and history not part of the commonly accepted history of The Holocaust? Nothing of The Holocaust or World War II can be understood without documenting who was Julius Friedrich Lehmann. Yet, J. F. Lehmann barely makes it onto the radar of even the most thorough books on the subject, and then only to name him as the person who delivered the Baur-Fischer-Lenz book to Adolf Hitler at Landsberg prison.”

A.E. Samaan

Source: From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848

Life, War, Books, World