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Quotes

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

—Thomas Carlyle, 1838

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

—Jane Austen, 1818

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

—Arthur Miller, 1961

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

—Voltaire, 1764

It is a luxury to be understood.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

—George Orwell, 1944

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BC

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

—Winston Churchill, 1943

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

—John Camden Hotten, 1859

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843