There are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in butter; but this is the sort of thing (as the proverb indicates) we overlook: there are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.
The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?
A kiss is a lovely trick to stop speech.
I will gladly go to jail in the name of free speech. I have no problem with what I said. Make me a martyr.
[T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
Lately I've been believing that music predates speech.
It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.
Every public elementary school ought to welcome Good News Clubs. Parents appreciate them; children love them; and the First Amendment protects them. The First Amendment requires that similar groups be provided with equal treatment. Religious speech is not a disability. It is our preeminent freedom.
The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.
Freedom of speech is of no use to a man who has nothing to say and freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God.
Right speech comes out of silence and right silence comes out of speech.
Thought and speech are of a thinking and speaking subject, and if the life of the latter depends on the performance of a superimposed function, it depends on fulfilling the requirements of this function thus it depends on those who control these requirements.
Silence may be as variously shaded as speech.
Life is more than thought: what a man feels, and what his senses awaken in him, are more indispensable to his life's fullness than subsequent reflection on their significance. Both Stirner and Nietzsche have elaborated Faust's opening speech in which he bemoans his wasted years in academia: this speech is Goethe's own impeachment of Kant and Hegel. Philosophy proceeds always under the risk of making a fetish of thinking.
In dialogue, make sure that your attributives do not awkwardly interrupt a spoken sentence. Place them where the breath would come naturally in speech-that is, where the speaker would pause for emphasis, or take a breath. The best test for locating an attributive is to speak the sentence aloud.
Speech that leads not to action, still more that hinders it, is a nuisance on the earth.
We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.
The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
I find doing speeches nerve wrecking.
It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.