#speaking

Yawns are not the only infectious things out there besides germs. Giggles can spread from person to person. So can blushing. But maybe the most powerful infectious thing is the act of speaking the truth. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#blushing #contagious #free-speech #giggle #giggles

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language." I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ↗

— Audre Lorde

#revolution #silence #speaking-out #truth #change

A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest ↗

— Winston Churchill

#public-speaking #simile #speaking #speech

When someone says, “One last thing,” it never is. Unless they die right after speaking. Make sure that they do. 
Check their pulse to be certain. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#certainty #conversation #death #murder #pulse

It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red, it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice. ↗

— Anna Julia Cooper

#brown #cause #even #hear #her

In speaking, for convenience, of devices and expedients, I did not intend to imply that Shakespeare always deliberately aimed at the effects which he produced. ↗

— Andrew Coyle Bradley

#always #convenience #deliberately #devices #did

When you hear someone from the very north of Scotland speaking, I think its nice, very musical and harmonious. ↗

— Sean Connery

#hear #i #i think #musical #nice

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously. ↗

— Barbara Deming

#certain #conspicuously #course #deter #deterrence

When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English. I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm. ↗

— David Dewhurst

#back #bolivia #came #comfortable #comfortable talking

Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#am #because #birth #care #child