Quotes about talk
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Haruki Murakami photo
John Wayne photo

“Talk low, Talk slow, and Don't say too much.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Variant: Talk low, talk slow and don't say too much.

Robin Hobb photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.”

Variant: Often quoted as: Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to take seriously.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Lord Darlington, Act I

Greg Mortenson photo

“When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.”

Greg Mortenson (1957) American mountaineer and humanitarian

Source: Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

John Ruskin photo
Miloš Forman photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Bertolt Brecht photo

“This is the year which people will talk about
This is the year which people will be silent about.The old see the young die.
The foolish see the wise die.The earth no longer produces, it devours.
The sky hurls down no rain, only iron.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Finland 1940" [Finnland 1940] (1940), trans. Sammy McLean in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 350
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“The most stimulating and encouraging thought is that you, dearest father, and my dear sister, are well, that I am an honest German, and that if I am not always permitted to talk I can think what I please; but that is all.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (Paris, 29 April 1778), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)

Ben Shapiro photo
Bill Evans photo
George Orwell photo
George Orwell photo
Tommy Lee photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“If you hear of any incident about me - a fight, a change of clothes, a little extra gel in the hair, don't believe it till you talk to me.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes

Edgar Guest photo
Carl Sagan photo
Stig Dagerman photo
Avril Lavigne photo
Taylor Swift photo
Mario Cuomo photo

“I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Time Magazine (2 June 1986)

Martin Luther photo

“When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: “Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2, Verse 19

Jane Goodall photo

“I wanted to talk to the animals like Dr. Dolittle.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Reported in Brad Dunn, "Change of Scenery", When They Were 22: 100 Famous People at the Turning Point in Their Lives (2006), p. 51

George Orwell photo

“People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty to some of the commoner diseases? "Natural" death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"How the Poor Die" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/Poor_Die/english/e_pdie, Now (November 1946)

James Burke (science historian) photo

“So, in the end, have we learned anything from this look at why the world turned out the way it is, that's of any use to us in our future? Something, I think. That the key to why things change is the key to everything. How easy is it for knowledge to spread? And that, in the past, the people who made change happen, were the people who had that knowledge, whether they were craftsmen, or kings. Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. Things like that [art book] as opposed to this [transparency of some filaments]. Know what it is? It's a bunch of amino acids, the stuff that goes to build up a worm, or a geranium, or you. This stuff [art book] is easier to take, isn't it? Understandable. Got people in it. This, [transparency] scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology, and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology they have begun to know that they don't know so much. And that, if they are to have more say in what happens to their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge, that they know exists, and that they don't possess. And by helped towards that knowledge I don't mean give everybody a computer and say: help yourself. Where would you even start? No, I mean trying to find ways to translate the knowledge. To teach us to ask the right questions. See, we're on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don't have access to it, as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb and blind. And I don't think most people want that. So, what do we do about it? I don't know. But maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything. Because that ability is there, as long as it is explained clearly enough. And then go and ask for explanations. And if you're thinking, right now, what do I ask for? Ask yourself, if there is anything in your life that you want changed. That's where to start.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Vātsyāyana photo
José Saramago photo

“You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage.”

Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) American university teacher (1879-1962)

As quoted in ‪Encore : A Continuing Anthology‬ (December 1943) edited by Smith Dent, "Fischerisms" p. 709

David Tennant photo
G. E. M. Anscombe photo
George Orwell photo

“I note that once again there is serious talk of trying to attract tourists to this country after the war… [b]ut it is quite safe to prophesy that the attempt will be a failure. Apart from the many other difficulties, our licensing laws and the artificial price of drink are quite enough to keep foreigners away…. But even these prices are less dismaying to foreigners than the lunatic laws which permit you to buy a glass of beer at half past ten while forbidding you to buy it at twenty-five past, and which have done their best to turn the pubs into mere boozing shops by excluding children from them.
How downtrodden we are in comparison with most other peoples is shown by the fact that even people who are far from being ""temperance"" don't seriously imagine that our licensing laws could be altered. Whenever I suggest that pubs might be allowed to open in the afternoon, or to stay open till midnight, I always get the same answer: ""The first people to object would be the publicans. They don't want to have to stay open twelve hours a day."" People assume, you see, that opening hours, whether long or short, must be regulated by the law, even for one-man businesses. In France, and in various other countries, a café proprietor opens or shuts just as it suits him. He can keep open the whole twenty-four hours if he wants to; and, on the other hand, if he feels like shutting his cafe and going away for a week, he can do that too. In England we have had no such liberty for about a hundred years, and people are hardly able to imagine it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please column in The Tribune (18 August 1944), http://alexpeak.com/twr/dwall/
"As I Please" (1943–1947)

Giuseppe Verdi photo

“I wish that every young man when he begins to write music would not concern himself with being a melodist, a harmonist, a realist, an idealist or a futurist or any other such devilish pedantic things. Melody and harmony should be simply tools in the hands of the artist, with which he creates music; and if a day comes when people stop talking about the German school, the Italian school, the past, the future, etc., etc., then art will perhaps come into its own.”

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) Italian composer

Io…vorrei che il giovane quando si mette a scrivere, non pensasse mai ad essere né melodista, né realista, né idealista, né avvenirista, né tutti i diavoli che si portino queste pedanterie. La melodia e l’armonia non devono essere che mezzi nella mano dell'artista per fare della Musica, e se verrà un giorno in cui non si parlerà più né di melodia né di armonia né di scuole tedesche, italiane, né di passato né di avvenire ecc. ecc. ecc. allora forse comincierà il regno dell'arte.
Letter to Opprandino Arrivabene, July 14, 1875, cited from Julian Budden Le opere di Verdi (Torino: E.D.T., 1986) vol. 2, p. 60; translation from Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997) p. 126

Ben Kowalewicz photo
George Orwell photo
Moshe Dayan photo

“If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”

Moshe Dayan (1915–1981) Israeli military leader and politician

As quoted in Newsweek (17 October 1977)

Ronald Reagan photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Daryl Hannah photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Wangari Maathai photo

“Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

Speech at Goldman Awards, San Francisco (24 April 2006)

Benjamin H. Freedman photo

“Who knew it? President Wilson knew it. Colonel House knew it. Other's knew it. Did I know it? I had a pretty good idea of what was going on: I was liaison to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., in the 1912 campaign when President Wilson was elected, and there was talk around the office there.”

Benjamin H. Freedman (1890–1984) American businessman

His opinion that there was a secret deal that resulted in the US entering the First World War on the side of the English.
Willard Hotel speech (1961)

Sathya Sai Baba photo

“Be sincere; talk only about your genuine experience; do not distort, exaggerate or falsify that experience.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

As quoted in Sathyam Sivam Sundaram (The Life Story of Sathya Sai Baba) by N. Kasturi, Ch. XXVI : Holy Joy http://www.ineval.org/sai/Teachings/SathyamSivamSundaram/s1026.html

George Lincoln Rockwell photo

“Jews talk a lot about God. But actually their god, just like Marx said, is money. Cash!”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

Interview with Alex Haley

George Orwell photo
Leonhard Euler photo

“Madam, I have come from a country where people are hanged if they talk.”

Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) Swiss mathematician

In Berlin, to the Queen Mother of Prussia, on his lack of conversation in his meeting with her, on his return from Russia; as quoted in Science in Russian Culture : A History to 1860 (1963) Alexander Vucinich
Variant: Madame... I have come from a country where one can be hanged for what one says.

Temple Grandin photo
Ferruccio Lamborghini photo
David Bowie photo

“How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

"Blackstar"
Song lyrics, Blackstar (2016)
Context: Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar) How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?
He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar, I’m not a gangster)

Stephen Hawking photo

“Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin'<nowiki/> (2014)
Context: For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

Kenzaburō Ōe photo

“I cannot talk about myself otherwise than by saying "Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself".”

Kenzaburō Ōe (1935) Japanese author

Japan, The Ambiguous, and Myself (1994)
Context: In the rest of my lecture I would like to use the word "ambiguous" in accordance with the distinction made by the eminent British poet Kathleen Raine; she once said of William Blake that he was not so much vague as ambiguous. I cannot talk about myself otherwise than by saying "Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself".

George Orwell photo

“It is almost impossible to think without talking.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (28 April 1944) https://books.google.com/books?id=fCRLPIbLP8IC&pg=PA133&dq=%22it+is+almost+impossible+to+think+without+talking%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZi9qjndzZAhURrVkKHbDDCxkQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q=%22it%20is%20almost%20impossible%20to%20think%20without%20talking%22&f=false
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Context: The greatest mistake is to imagine that the human being is an autonomous individual. The secret freedom which you can supposedly enjoy under a despotic government is nonsense, because your thoughts are never entirely your own. Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists, not only need encouragement and an audience, they need constant stimulation from other people. It is almost impossible to think without talking.... Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

Keith Richards photo
Pelé photo
George Orwell photo
James Hetfield photo

“Lars would talk his way into their pants. Kirk had a babyface that was appealing to the girls. And Cliff; he had a big dick. Word got around about that, I guess.”

James Hetfield (1963) American musician, songwriter and record producer

James Hetfield - Playboy April 2001.

Joaquin Phoenix photo

“I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.”

Joaquin Phoenix (1974) American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist

"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Tamora Pierce photo

“Folk like you always lay the blame on somebody else. If I'd listened to talk like that, I'd've let myself get killed by my own people months ago.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Veralidaine "Daine" Sarrasri

Zafar Mirzo photo
Robert Frost photo

“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Letter to Louis Untermeyer (8 July 1915)
1910s

William Shakespeare photo

“No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth”

Variant: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills
Source: Richard II

Sadhguru photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Mindy Kaling photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Mario Puzo photo
Marie Corelli photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“Talking about my fears to others feeds it.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Christopher Paolini photo
Edith Sitwell photo
James Patterson photo
Andy Rooney photo

“Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Source: Sincerely, Andy Rooney

Cassandra Clare photo

“We need to talk. All of us. About what we're going to do now."
"I was going to watch Project Runway. It's on next.”

Clary and Jace, pg. 137
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo

“Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.”

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Gary Snyder photo
Etty Hillesum photo
Arthur Miller photo

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

As quoted in The Observer [London] (26 November 1961)

Lewis Carroll photo

“The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Thomas Mann photo
Joel Osteen photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods