Quotes about talk
page 21

Trent Reznor photo
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington photo

“I have no small talk and Peel has no manners.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman

As quoted in Collections and Recollections (1898) by G. W. E. Russell, ch.14.

“And we talked of girls, and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter.”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

"All Day It Has Rained", line 17, from Raider's Dawn and Other Poems (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1942) p. 16.

Herbert A. Simon photo

“Abraham teaches us the right way of conversing with God: "And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him." When we plead with Him, our faces should be in the dust.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 332.

Alfredo Di Stéfano photo
Prem Rawat photo
Cesare Pavese photo
M.I.A. photo
Aldous Huxley photo

“Scotty and I became good friends. We had an immediate musical rapport that was sensational. We did a lot of listening and talking. Besides technique, he had governing, control. I think he was the first bass player who was fleet-footed in the musical sense.
[…]
What a trauma! It struck me right down—that someone I was developing such a relationship with would suddenly not be there.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On bassist Scott LaFaro and his premature demise, as quoted in Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro https://books.google.com/books?id=KnTSqVu9Zr4C&pg=PA67&dq=%22Clare+relates%22+intitle:Jade&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMI-9Dphf_kxgIVCGk-Ch3DaQiT#v=onepage&q=%22Clare%20relates%22%20intitle%3AJade&f=false (2009) by Helene LaFaro-Fernandez, pp. 67-68

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher photo

“The humanising of war? You might as well talk about the humanizing of Hell!…… The essence of war is violence! Moderation in war is imbecility!…..”

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (1841–1920) Royal Navy admiral of the fleet

At the 1st Hague Peace Conference, May 1899
Quoted in Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pEf98V-dbwoC&pg=PA431&lpg=PA431&dq=jacky+fisher+moderation+in+war+imbecility&source=bl&ots=UsLopgdefe&sig=FA9GN8mdf4T3qRbja8zCWvNWlzk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9quGN6abTAhWCJMAKHds2C2cQ6AEISTAH#v=onepage&q&f=false(1991), Robert K. Massie, p. 431.
This originated from the notes of the journalist W.T. Stead, quoted in full in Fisher of Kilverstone (1973), Ruddock F. Mackay, Clarendon Press, p. 223.
Context: The humanising of war? You might as well talk about the humanizing of Hell!...... The essence of war is violence! Moderation in war is imbecility!..... I am not for war, I am for peace! That is why I am for a supreme Navy....... The supremacy of the British Navy is the best security for peace in the world...... If you rub it in both at home and abroad that you are ready for instant war..... and intend to be first in and hit your enemy in the belly and kick him when he is down and boil your prisoners in oil (if you take any), and torture his women and children, then people will keep clear of you.

Bernard Cornwell photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
William Empson photo

“p>It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Let It Go" (1949), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 99.
The Complete Poems

George Noory photo
Seymour Papert photo
Kamal Haasan photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Amitabh Bachchan photo
James Howard Kunstler photo
Alexander Marlow photo
Dylan Moran photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“There is no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

После смерти Махатмы Ганди поговорить не с кем.
Responding to a question "Former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called you a 'pure democrat'. Do you consider yourself such?" June 4, 2007, http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/06/04/2149_type82916_132716.shtml
2006- 2010

Bill Engvall photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo
Sarah Palin photo
Chiaki Kuriyama photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Charles James Fox photo

“Religion was best understood when least talked of.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (7 February 1773), quoted in Lord John Russell (ed.), Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox. Volume I (London: Richard Bentley, 1853), p. 71.
1770s

Bogumil Goltz photo

“What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, that it should be necessary for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and irrational towards their fellow-creatures! Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them — have they not feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? Do their voices of joy and sorrow indeed fail to speak to the human heart and conscience — so that they can murder the jubilant lark, in the first joy of his spring-time, who ought to warm their hearts with sympathy, from delight in bloodshed or for their ‘sport,’ or with a horrible insensibility and recklessness only to practise their aim in shooting! Is there no soul manifest in the eyes of the living or dying animal — no expression of suffering in the eye of a deer or stag hunted to death — nothing which accuses them of murder before the avenging Eternal Justice? …. Are the souls of all other animals but man mortal, or are they essential in their organisation? Does the world-idea (Welt-Idee) pertain to them also — the soul of nature — a particle of the Divine Spirit? I know not; but I feel, and every reasonable man feels like me, it is in miserable, intolerable contradiction with our human nature, with our conscience, with our reason, with all our talk of humanity, destiny, nobility; it is in frightful (himmelschreinder) contradiction with our poetry and philosophy, with our nature and with our (pretended) love of nature, with our religion, with our teachings about benevolent design — that we bring into existence merely to kill, to maintain our own life by the destruction of other life. …. It is a frightful wrong that other species are tortured, worried, flayed, and devoured by us, in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to this by necessity; while in sinning against the defenceless and helpless, just claimants as they are upon our reasonable conscience and upon our compassion, we succeed only in brutalising ourselves. This, besides, is quite certain, that man has no real pity and compassion for his own species, so long as he is pitiless towards other races of beings.”

Bogumil Goltz (1801–1870) German humorist and satirist

Das Menschendasein in seinen weltewigen Zügen und Zeichen (1850); as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), pp. 287-286.

Louis-ferdinand Céline photo

“I have noticed in this economic downturn that more of my friends talk about God…”

John Townsend (1952) Canadian clinical psychologist and author

Where Is God (2009, Thomas Nelson publishers)

Werner Herzog photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Joe Biden photo
Vitruvius photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Barney Frank photo
Walter Lippmann photo
Tessa Virtue photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Oliver Sacks photo
Tom Petty photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Sarah Vowell photo

“I talk about going to his Inauguration and crying when he took the oath, 'cause I was so afraid he was going to "wreck the economy and muck up the drinking water"… the failure of my pessimistic imagination at that moment boggles my mind now.”

Sarah Vowell (1969) American author, journalist, essayist and social commentator

Referring to George W. Bush on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart http://www.cc.com/video-clips/e88k08/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-sarah-vowell (2006-02-21)

Tim Cook photo
Joe Biden photo
Roy Moore photo
Bill Moyers photo
Naomi Klein photo

“When we lack the ability to talk back to entities that are culturally and politically powerful, the very foundations of free speech and democratic society are called into question.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Eight, "Corporate Censorship"

John Adams photo
Jay Nordlinger photo
Tim Powers photo
Sam Donaldson photo

“Well, if there's no 'war' that begins, but you say 'war begins', no one's going to buy your newspaper the next day because they'll be on to the fact that you don't know what you're talking about.”

Sam Donaldson (1934) American journalist

As quoted in "Respek" http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=m1_FAsefZ6o (18 July 2004), Da Ali G Show.
2000s

Ihara Saikaku photo
John DiMaggio photo
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo

“… that new spirit which is passing from municipal into Imperial politics, which aims more at the improvement of the lot of the worker and the toiler than at those great constitutional effects in which past Parliaments have taken as their pride… It is all very well to make great speeches and to win great divisions. It is well to speak with authority in the councils of the world and to see your navies riding on every sea, and to see your flag on every shore. That is well, but it is not all. I am certain that there is a party in this country not named as yet that is disconnected with any existing political organization, a party which is inclined to say, "A plague on both your Houses, a plague on all your parties, a plague on all your politics, a plague on your ending discussions which yield so little fruit." (Cheers.) "Have done with this unending talk and come down and do something for the people." It is this spirit which animates, as I believe, the great masses of our artisans, the great masses of our working clergy, the great masses of those who work for and with the poor, and who for the want of a better word I am compelled to call by the bastard term of philanthropists.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Speech to a meeting at St James's Hall on behalf of the Progressive majority in the London County Council (21 March 1894), reported in The Times (22 March 1894), p. 7.

John Gray photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Yevgeniy Chazov photo
Peter F. Drucker photo

“The moment people talk of "implementing" instead of "doing," and of "finalizing" instead of "finishing," the organization is already running a fever.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 94

“I talk thinking that I shouldn't talk: that is how I talk.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Hablo pensando que no debiera hablar: así hablo.
Voces (1943)

Jorge Majfud photo
Anatoliy Tymoshchuk photo
Alex Jones photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Kent Hovind photo
Iain Banks photo

“What they had talked themselves into, they could be silent out of.”

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter IX (p. 157).

Penn Jillette photo

“A guy called up, and in his lead, he said, "We've talked before. I used to be with US but now I'm for SELF." And I was like, "I guess we know everything now, don't we?" … I kind of laughed and I went, "I guess a lot of people are like that." And he paused and went, "Uhhh… what?"”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

And I said, "Oh, nothing."
"An Interview with Penn Jillette : The non-silent half of Penn & Teller discusses his career" http://movies.ign.com/articles/454/454422p1.html IGN (13 October 2003)
2000s

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan photo
Arthur Travers Harris photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Coluche photo

“Where the Gestapo had the means to make you talk, today's politicians have the means to keep us quiet.”

Coluche (1944–1986) French comedian and actor

Si la Gestapo avait les moyens de vous faire parler, les politiciens d’aujourd’hui ont les moyens de vous faire taire.
[Coluche, Les discours en disent long, Coluche : l’intégrale, 6, Sony Music, 1996]

Jimmy Kimmel photo

“I'm on the Internet a lot more than I watch TV and most everybody I know is, and yet if you watch most late-night talk shows, it's as if it doesn't even exist. So the Internet, it's just something I wanted to make use of in some way. I was fascinated by what appeared to be a child singing this song. It just struck me as funny.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

On his initial impression of Andy Milonakis — reported in Susan Carpenter, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (May 3, 2006) "Making a fool of himself for video - Andy Milonakis' success story", Chicago Tribune, p. 8A.

Billy Joel photo
Mark Wahlberg photo

“A lot of celebrities…shouldn't [talk politics]… They're pretty out of touch with the common person, the everyday guy out there providing for their family.”

Mark Wahlberg (1971) American actor, television producer and rap musician

"Mark Wahlberg: 'Hollywood is living in a bubble' and stars shouldn't talk politics" http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/12/01/mark-wahlberg-hollywood-is-living-in-bubble-and-stars-shouldnt-talk-politics.html, FoxNews.com (1 December 2016)

Paul Theroux photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Sarah Orne Jewett photo
John Hicks photo
Raymond Carver photo
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo
Leung Chun-ying photo