Top 655 Speech Quotes

When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed – from song lyric to tragic speech – must make its point, as it were, without reference back.

I thought ‘The King’s Speech’ was great.

Television has its own award. It’s called the Emmy. It’s a good award. I like it. I have one. But you don’t see movies like ‘The King’s Speech’ win Oscars and then go to TV and qualify for Emmys. In documentaries, some networks have been able to game the system.

Monkeys who very sensibly refrain from speech, lest they should be set to earn their livings.

I think at some point every actor has practiced their acceptance speech while they’re having a shower. It’s fun.

In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of.

I’ve skewered whites, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, gays, straights, rednecks, addicts, the elderly, and my wife. As a standup comic, it is my job to make sure the majority of people laugh, and I believe that comedy is the last true form of free speech.

I feel – and this goes back to social media and freedom of speech – when you’re on a public platform, and you put something out there in front of people who don’t know you, they might just perceive it in a very different way altogether.

Speech within the kingdom of Amazonia – run by its sovereign Jeff Bezos and his board of directors with help from the wise counsel and judgment of the company’s executives – is not protected in the same way that speech is constitutionally protected in America’s public spaces.

The most terrifying thing in the world was having to give a speech at my girlfriend’s wedding. I was physically shaking and sweating the entire time.

It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we agree.

Balance is key. Balance is a virtue. Balance is next to godliness, maybe. We should all aspire to better balance. Too much of what is said in this world is one-sided, and we need more balance – in our speech, in our music, in our art, in everything.

I wasn’t a kid growing up thinking, ‘One day I’ll get an Oscar and make a speech.’ That wasn’t on my mind.

We tend to assume that we have a baseline of speech that’s going to be normal in all contexts, but the truth is, we all change our ways of speaking depending on who we’re talking to. And so I think it’s kind of a gesture of politeness to the people you’re speaking to to try to say something in their own idiom.

In everything I do, I like to set the idea for girls that they can do anything. I was really moved by Hillary Clinton’s speech when she lost the election – she didn’t want young girls to feel like it wasn’t possible and wanted them to know a female president will eventually happen. That’s important.

I want to be able to speak with errors in my wording, errors in my grammar. When you type things into Google search, it corrects your words. With speech, I want it to be general enough, smart enough, to know ‘No, he couldn’t have meant these words that I think he said. He must have really meant something similar.’

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

A lot of people think that public speaking means that you are standing at a podium giving a speech, but public speaking comes in lots of different formats.

Our founding documents didn’t just protect the right to bear arms: they were designed to protect all the principles upon which America was founded – and the first among those were freedom of worship, peaceful assembly, and the right to free speech.

The perfection of style consists in the use of the exact speech necessary to convey the sense in the fewest words consistent with perspicuity, at the same time having regard to appropriateness and harmony of expression. Its greater excellencies are directness, accuracy, appropriateness and perspicuity.

The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?

Every week in the Senate, I give a speech telling my colleagues it is time to wake up to the reality of a changing climate.

My dad was a proper old English gentleman, even though he was from the Caribbean. He used to stand up and salute during the Queen’s Christmas speech.

We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like Western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we’re going to continue down the other pathway, where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties, and that we remain a Christian nation.

Nor was it only from the millions of slaves that chains had been removed; the whole nation had been in bondage; free speech had been suppressed.

I fight, and have fought, for political freedom, for justice and for fairness and freedom of speech.

The right to free speech is critical to our democracy.

In ‘The King’s Speech,’ patriotism is utterly contained within a historical moment, the third of September, 1939, where the aggressor is clear, the fight is clear, it hasn’t become complicated over time.

Unlike film, live theater is an anti-naturalistic medium in which character is mainly illuminated through speech and movement.

We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.

Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.

I watched Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, and I saw a man who loves his country with all his heart and soul. I also saw a strong leader, which is absolutely crucial for the safety of the Israeli people.

I’ll be giving a speech at the randomest place, like a bank or something, and a guy in a suit will say, ‘I’m totally freaked out that I’m talking to the girl from ‘Cremaster.’ For the rest of my life, that movie will be playing in a museum somewhere. I never could have expected that huge response.

The only reason I signed on for a speech and drama course was because I thought it would be easy, but as soon as I stepped on the stage, I thought, ‘This is exactly where I belong.’

Body language is a very powerful tool. We had body language before we had speech, and apparently, 80% of what you understand in a conversation is read through the body, not the words.

Fidel Castro had to sit there while he was given a speech on democracy, something the Cuban people have not been able to hear for 43 years.

What you hear is southern Michigan, not a drawl, but a halting kind of speech where you leave spaces when there shouldn’t be any. We take a breath anywhere.

We’ve noted that the Clinton camp was the first to get it out there, trying to say there was something untoward about the speech Melania Trump gave. It’s just another example, as far as we’re concerned, that when Hillary Clinton is threatened by a female, the first thing she does is try to destroy the person.

No man not inspired can make a good speech without preparation.

I can not stay at the place when a stranger starts talking to me. I will try to cut the speech as quick as possible and move away. I had to break this inhibition before becoming an actor.

Prior to going to college, I had a pretty strong accent, and that was one of the things I had to work on a lot. I went to North Carolina School of the Arts; my speech teacher… that was one of the things we really had to work on over the years, and thankfully I think it finally worked.

My first job had me miscast as a bubbly shopgirl; I was pathologically shy and, thus, tended to replace human speech with excessive head gestures. It was like being waited on by Harpo Marx.

I was always a clown. In the eighth grade I won a city speech contest by doing an Eddie Murphy routine. I’m no good at public speaking, but if I can assume a role and speak as that person, then I’m fine. When I had to give a book report, I always did it in character.

If I, as a liberal, didn’t speak out against those who would squelch the free speech of conservatives, I wouldn’t deserve to call myself a liberal.

I always knew it’d be difficult to balance the right of privacy and the right of free speech. I think that is a tension that we’ve seen in court case after court case and law after law. And we always strive to find that right balance.

And a democracy can’t exist without free speech and the right to assemble. And that’s what Americans tend to forget. And they’re born into a culture where they take all of their freedoms for granted.

Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.

A story is told as much by silence as by speech.

I don’t think we should be deprived of the privilege of free speech.

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Without free speech no search for truth is possible… no discovery of truth is useful.