Great Speeches Quotes

I don't attach importance to great speeches or philosophy. ~ Jacques Santer

I speak of a Canada where men and women of aboriginal ancestry, of French and British heritage, of the diverse cultures of the world, demonstrate the will to share this land in peace, in justice and with mutual respect. ~ Pierre Trudeau

A lot of people have said to me, 'That's a great idea, running for president. You'll get booked for more speeches. You can write a book.' ~ John Bolton

Please make this nation remember how futures are built ~ Mario Cuomo

Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on. ~ Peggy Noonan

Great novels are above all great fairy tales ... literature does not tell the truth but makes it up. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

We cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or know what obedience we owe to the magistrate, or what we may justly expect from him, unless we know what he is, why he is, and by whom he is made to be what he is ... I cannot know how to obey unless I know in what, and to whom; nor in what unless I know what ought to be commanded; nor what ought to be commanded unless I understand the original right of the commander, which is the great arcanum. ~ Algernon Sidney

Our object in life should be to accumulate a great number of grand questions to be asked and resolved in eternity ... ~ Norman Foster

Most great artists define a new and unique region of hell. ~ Scott Miller

When Israel was from bondage led,Led by the Almighty's handFrom out of foreign land,The great sea beheld and fled. ~ Abraham Cowley

I was fortunate to sell at a time of great sea change in the romance genre; suddenly heroines were allowed to be portrayed as having rich, fulfilling lives. They didn't need a man for security or self-esteem, but having that one very special man in their lives proved the icing on the cake. ~ JoAnn Ross

I've been a fan of Metallica and friends with those guys for a long time and that was just great - half Alice In Chains and half Metallica playing together. ~ Jerry Cantrell

People like Justin Frankel and Daniel Sheldon linger on the fringe until they dream up something that has great commercial potential. Then some big company swoops in and buys them, or they give birth to the big company themselves. ~ Michael Lewis

She realized, then, something she had never fully understood before. She'd always wondered what had led her father to turn to the dark side, to become Darth Vader. She'd imagined it came from ambition, greed, or some other venal weakness. Never had she considered that the turn might begin in a better place, out of the desire to save someone or to avenge a great wrong. Even if it led to evil, that first impulse might be born out of loyalty, a sense of justice, or even love. ~ Claudia Gray

I have a lot of blurring between fiction and non-fiction in so many of my works. For example, my first novel, 'When Nietzsche Wept,' has a great deal of non-fiction in it. I didn't create many characters at all. Almost all of them are historical characters that actually existed. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

[I]t's necessary to exert very great foresight every time you go to blame or praise a man, so that you won't speak incorrectly ... For you shouldn't suppose that, while stones are sacred and pieces of wood, and birds, and snakes, human beings are not. Rather of all these things, the most sacred is the good human being, while the most polluted is the wicked.
Speech attributed to Socrates in Plato, Minos 319a, trans. Thomas L. Pangle, in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 63. ~ Plato

In the United States there's an optimistic expectation that most people will remain faithful to their partner, but actual data show great numbers of people will not. ~ Aziz Ansari

Being able to scream at the top of my lungs in front of people is very therapeutic. It is a great gift for me to be able to do that. ~ Dave Matthews

I think it's often assumed that the role of poetry is to comfort, but for me, poetry is the great unsettler. It questions the established order of the mind. It is radical, by which I don't mean that it is either leftwing or rightwing, but that it works at the roots of thinking. ~ Alice Oswald

"The more we search for ourselves, the less likely we are to find ourselves; and the more we search for God, and to serve our fellow-men, the more profoundly will we become acquainted with ourselves, and the more inwardly assured. This is one of the great spiritual laws of life." (From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, February 18, 1954) ~ Shoghi Effendi

We had forgotten the art of using silence to convey emotions in our films and that's what you seem to have mastered. You've used silence to great advantage in the film. It's brilliant. ~ Amitabh Bachchan

Leadership is influence. It is the ability to obtain followers. When the leader lacks confidence, the followers have no commitment. A leader is great not because of his power, but because of his ability to empower others. ~ John C. Maxwell

The great thing about this project," said Tim, "is that it's software that talks to physical things rather than software that just talks to other software. You can see the effect of what you are doing. ~ Michael Lewis

Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains. ~ David Hume

It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman! ~ Audrey Tautou

There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, 'Give me this MOUNTAIN,' give me these challenges. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. There will come a day when God will settle accounts and people will be held responsible for the evil they've perpetrated and the suffering they've caused. Criticizing God for not doing it right now is like reading half a novel and criticizing the author for not resolving the plot. God will bring accountability at the right time - in fact, the Bible says one reason he's delaying is because some people are still following the clues and have yet to find him.15 He's actually delaying the consummation of history out of his great love for them. ~ Lee Strobel

It is never an idea, technology, market forces, or access to capital that makes a company innovative. What differentiates an innovative company from an average company is the people working inside the company. ~ Jag Randhawa

Conservatives ... may decide to join the game and seek activist judges with conservative views. Should that come to pass, those who have tempted the courts to political judging will have gained nothing for themselves but will have destroyed a great and essential institution ... There are only two sides. Either the Constitution and statutes are law, which means their principles are known and control judges, or they are malleable texts that judges may rewrite to see that particular groups or political causes win. ~ Robert Bork

Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns. ~ Leo Strauss

With great care, Amy opened the cellar door.
With ladylike demeanor, she descended the stairs. And as her reward, she had the satisfaction of catching His Mighty Lordship sitting on the cot, his knee crooked sideways and his ankle pulled toward him, cursing at the manacle.
"I got it out of your own castle," she said.
Northcliff jumped like a lad caught at a mischief. "My . . . castle?" At once he realized what she meant. "Here on the island, you mean. The old ancestral pile."
"Yes." She strolled farther into the room. "I went down into the dungeons, crawled around in among the spider webs and the skeleton of your family's enemies - "
"Oh, come on." He straightened his leg. "There aren't any skeletons."
"No," she admitted.
"We had them removed years ago."
For one instant, she was shocked. So his family had been ruthless murderers! Then she realized he was smirking. The big, pompous jackass was making a jest of her labors. "If I could have found manacles that were in good shape I'd have locked both your legs to the wall."
"Why stop there? Why not my hands, too?" He moved his leg to make the chain clink loudly. "Think of your satisfaction at the image of my starving, naked body chained to the cold stone - "
"Starving?" She cast a knowledgeable eye at the empty breakfast tray, then allowed her lips to curve into a sarcastic smile.
"You'd love a look at my naked body, though, wouldn't you?" He fixed his gaze on her, and for on ~ Christina Dodd

In fact, jazz has such a great feeling and great emotional content that it really doesn't require you to have technical understanding of it. I think you just have to allow your feelings to go with the music and you will find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly. ~ Dave Holland

Nowadays we are fond of literal translations ... That would have seemed a crime to translators in ages past ... They wanted to prove that the vernacular was as capable of a great poem as the original. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The mother myth gives great cover to unloving mothers, who far too often operate undisturbed while their husbands, other family members, and society deflect any criticism or scrutiny aimed at them. Most societies glorify mothers, as if the mere act of giving birth makes them inherently capable of nurturing. That's simply not true. ~ Susan Forward

The first psychoanalytic patients were people who, by definition, did not fit in, people speaking the wrong language, a language of bizarre physical symptoms, a language very unlike the language of science, and for which science suggested itself as the great explainer. These people were suffering, in Freud's view...from the ordeals of intimacy. ~ Adam Phillips

Stitch tucked his knife into the utility belt he always wore around his waist. "Jerin, I'm going to miss practicing with you. Playing Knights and letting you win." He patted the man on the shoulder. "And filling your boots with slugs. Such great times."
"That was you!" Jerin roared, his fingers wrapping around the leather covered hilt. ~ Jackie Castle

Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. ~ Barack Obama

No matter how many great performances or exciting visuals we put together for the movie, we found that it was all somewhat two dimensional until we added the emotional heart of Howard Shore's music. Then, and only then, did the film come to life. ~ Peter Jackson

You have a great name .. They must kill your name before they can kill you , cuz name is your idea , and ideas are bulletproofs ) ~ Hamza Wolf

Hard Day's Night was one of those great films that will never happen again to anyone in their lifetime. UA were in profit before we'd even finished shooting - The advance sales on the album - the film was out before the album was out was more than it cost UA to make the film. ~ Richard Lester