Speaker Quotes

A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that 'individuality' is the key to success. (Robert Orben)
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. View quote
Frederick Douglass
A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory. View quote
Charles Cooley
Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwelland George the Third (Treason, cried the Speaker) ... may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it. View quote
Patrick Henry
In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker. View quote
Plutarch
The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, who hands over to the words. View quote
Stéphane Mallarmé
I'm a horrible public speaker. View quote
Bill Condon
The decision for me was whether to have "The Father" be a book that told a story - from the point of view of this speaker, the daughter - without, as in the earlier books, then having a section on something else and a section on something else. View quote
Sharon Olds
Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the Ten Commandments are a historical document that contains moral, ethical, and legal truisms that any person of any religion or even an atheist can recognize and appreciate. View quote
Cliff Stearns
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the definition of a marriage as between one man and one woman. View quote
Randy Neugebauer
It's been a very old thing for people to gather together and laugh at stuff. The first comedian in America really was Abraham Lincoln ... He used to go to a pub near where he lived and stand in front of the fire and he packed the place every night and he would just talk and bust everybody in their guts. He was just a hilarious speaker and that's what he did. (Louis C.K.)
When you want to hear a philosopher, do not say, 'You say nothing to me'; only show yourself worthy or fit to hear, and then you will see how you will move the speaker. (81). View quote
Epictetus
The traveler to the United States will do well, however, to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Mr. Speaker, I am sure the picture of the hon. member of the NDP [Svend Robinson] is posted in much more wonderful places than just police stations. View quote
Stephen Harper
When Sir Winton Turnbull [who represented a large rural seat], a slow and sometimes stumbling speaker, was raving and ranting on the adjournment and shouted: "I am a Count–ry member". I interjected "I remember". Sir Winton could not understand why, for the first time in all the years he had been speaking in the House, there was instant and loud applause from both sides. View quote
Gough Whitlam
In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect. View quote
John Searle
The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else. View quote
John Searle
A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause. View quote
W. S. Gilbert
A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them. View quote
H. L. Mencken
The speaker must choose a comprehensible expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another. (Jürgen Habermas)
As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access. View quote
Jürgen Habermas
With the computer and programming languages, mathematics has newly-acquired tools, and its notation should be reviewed in the light of them. The computer may, in effect, be used as a patient, precise, and knowledgeable "native speaker" of mathematical notation. View quote
Kenneth E. Iverson
Nothing disturbs me more than superficiality and mere sloganizing on matters of public policy, and the suspicion that what the speaker is saying represents the full extent of his knowledge on the subject. View quote
Preston Manning
I believe that any type of education can be great, but an education about ourselves can create something wonderful. I am a comedian, but people have called me a motivational speaker. I don't really consider myself that at all. View quote
Andy Andrews