Quotes and Sayings about Silence
"The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it."
- Kate Adie
(Related: Democracy, Information, Secrecy, Silence)
"I, schooled in misery, know many purifying rites, and I know where speech is proper and where silence."
- Aeschylus
(Related: Misery, Silence, Speech)
"Since long I've held silence a remedy for harm."
- Aeschylus
(Related: Harm, Silence)
"Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence."
- Vittorio Alfieri
(Related: Daughter, Deep, Silence, Vengeance)
"Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer."
- Muhammad Ali
(Related: Silence)
"In some causes silence is dangerous."
- Saint Ambrose
(Related: Causes, Silence)
"In horror movies today it's lots of fast cut shot and lots of loud noises on the soundtrack. I tried to do the opposite. Playing with silence for instance."
- Alejandro Amenabar
(Related: Movies, Horror, Silence, Today)
"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."
- Henri Frederic Amiel
(Related: Truth, Falsehood, May, Silence)
"Only silence perfects silence."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Silence)
"I am a prince I have it all, and I hear your foot steps on the wall, I wait in silence for your call, and take a shot and watch you fall."
- Trey Anastasio
(Related: Silence)
"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation."
- Jean Arp
(Related: Life, Contemplation, Day, Humanity, Machines, Meditation, Silence, Will)
"A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together."
- Margaret Atwood
(Related: Silence, Speech, Voice)
"No man pleases by silence; many I please by speaking briefly."
- Ausonius
(Related: Man, Silence)
"From politics, it was an easy step to silence."
- Jane Austen
(Related: Politics, Silence)
"Sometimes I wish that applause would come just a bit later, when it is so beautifully hushed that I feel like holding my breath in the silence of the end."
- Emanuel Ax
(Related: Applause, End, Silence)
"Silence is the virtue of fools."
- Francis Bacon
(Related: Virtue, Fools, Silence)
"Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom."
- Francis Bacon
(Related: Wisdom, Silence, Sleep)
"Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence."
- Faith Baldwin
(Related: Communication, Silence, Talking)
"Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling."
- Honore De Balzac
(Related: Death, Feeling)
"In the beginning, there was silence. And out of the silence came the sound. The sound is not here."
- Daniel Barenboim
(Related: Beginning, Silence, Sound)
"There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle."
- Daniel Barenboim
(Related: End, Silence)
"It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it."
- Francis Beaumont
(Related: Argument, Injury, Silence)
"Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
- Samuel Beckett
(Related: Silence)
"Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence."
- Samuel Beckett
(Related: Nothing, Silence, Writing)
"Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."
- Samuel Beckett
(Related: Nothingness, Silence, Word)
"I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo."
- Samuel Beckett
(Related: Butterflies, Man, State, Vertigo)
"And now there is merely silence, silence, silence, saying all we did not know."
- William R. Benet
(Related: Now, Saying, Silence)
"The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds."
- Isaiah Berlin
(Related: Men, People, Ideas, First, Silence)
"Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute."
- Josh Billings
(Related: Arguments, Silence)
"I love silence."
- Brenda Blethyn
(Related: Love, Silence)
"What a mysterious thing madness is. I have watched patients whose lips are forever sealed in a perpetual silence. They live, breathe, eat; the human form is there, but that something, which the body can live without, but which cannot exist without the body, was missing."
- Nellie Bly
(Related: Body, Madness, Silence)
"To listen to your own silence is the key to comedy."
- Elayne Boosler
(Related: Comedy, Key, Silence)
"There may be something good in silence. It's a brand new thing. You can hear the funniest little discussions, if you keep turning the volume down. Shut yourself up, and listen out loud."
- Wes Borland
(Related: May, Silence)
"The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need for words, and ask no more than complicitous silence."
- Pierre Bourdieu
(Related: Successful, Silence, Words)
"Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak."
- Elizabeth Bowen
"True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat."
- F. H. Bradley
(Related: Man, Silence)
"The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed."
- Charlotte Bronte
(Related: Dreams, Heart, Thoughts, Silence)
"If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results."
- Emily Bronte
(Related: Work, Obscurity, Results, Silence)
"A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words."
- Phillips Brooks
(Related: Power, Man, Right, Silence, Words)
"Everything is Song. Everything is Silence. Since it all turns out to be illusion, perfectly being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, you are free to die laughing."
- James Broughton
(Related: Being, Illusion, Nothing, Silence, Song)
"Odd how much it hurts when a friend moves away- and leaves behind only silence."
- Pam Brown
(Related: Friend, Silence)
"But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!"
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(Related: Man, Silence)
"Silence is a statement that is open to gross misinterpretation."
- Craig Bruce
(Related: Open, Silence)
"For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it."
- Martin Buber
(Related: Nature, Soul, Being, Conflict, Man, Silence, Sin)
"Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing."
- William S. Burroughs
(Related: People, Silence)
"Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over."
- Octavia Butler
(Related: Art, Time, People, Friend, Being, Destiny, Silence)
"It is tact that is golden, not silence."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: Silence, Tact)
"Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: May, Silence, Tact)
"Silence is sometimes the severest criticism."
- Charles Buxton
(Related: Criticism, Silence)
"And in the afternoon they entered a land - but such a land! A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay."
- George Washington Cable
(Related: Land, Mourning, Shadow, Silence)
"There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot."
- John Cage
(Related: Time, Fact, May, Silence, Space)
"The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Quiet, Silence, World)
"Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Time, Deep, Eternity, Silence, Speech)
"Silence is more eloquent than words."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Silence, Words)
"Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Fashion, Silence)
"Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Silence, Speech)
"When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Oak, Silence)
"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
(Related: Time, Deep, Eternity, Lies, Silence, Speech)
"Silences between movements are employed only in order to bring the opposing duo to the fore."
- Elliott Carter
(Related: Order)
"I have seen him set fire to his wigwam and smooth over the graves of his fathers... clap his hand in silence over his mouth, and take the last look over his fair hunting ground, and turn his face in sadness to the setting sun."
- George Catlin
(Related: Fathers, Fire, Hunting, Sadness, Silence, Sun)
"The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere."
- Michel De Certeau
(Related: Information, Media, News, Now, Silence, Statistics)
"Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge."
- Aime Cesaire
(Related: Knowledge, Silence)
"Silence is one of the great arts of conversation."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Conversation, Silence)
"Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Denial, Silence)
"Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Open, Silence, Speech)
"A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Conversation, Invention, Silence, Speech)
"I was silent as a child, and silenced as a young woman; I am taking my lumps and bumps for being a big mouth, now, but usually from those whose opinion I don't respect."
- Sandra Cisneros
(Related: Being, Now, Opinion, Respect, Woman)
"Silence moves faster when it's going backward."
- Jean Cocteau
(Related: Silence)
"To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one."
- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
(Related: Silence)
"Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Silence)
"Silence is a true friend who never betrays."
- Confucius
(Related: Friend, Silence)
"In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Love, Meaning, Words, Worry)
"After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Acceptance, Argument, May, Silence)
"If it's total freedom, I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer, with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play."
- Alice Cooper
(Related: Freedom, Play, Silence)
"The Browning love story? It is an ideal, all too rare, and yet I hardly think it strange. It would have been far stranger had the fates allowed those two brilliant passionate souls to beat themselves out in silence."
- Marie Corelli
(Related: Love, Silence)
"It's kind of like Silence of the lambs meets Boogey Nights."
- Brittany Daniel
(Related: Silence)
"Music is the silence between the notes."
- Claude Debussy
(Related: Music, Silence)
"Silence, exile, cunning and so on... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Nature, Work, Ideas, Cunning, Quiet, Silence)
"When Silence of the Lambs did well commercially it was more than anything. My partner Ed Saxon and I were just so relieved that finally we had made a movie that had made some money!"
- Jonathan Demme
(Related: Silence)
"I got quite bored, serving in the bar. Since I was there, the customers wouldn't talk about women, and with half their subject matter denied them, it was: horses, silence; horses, silence."
- Bernadette Devlin
(Related: Women, Horses, Silence, Talk)
"You haven't partied until you've partied at dawn in complete silence with Buddhist monks."
- Cameron Diaz
(Related: Buddhist, Dawn, Silence)
"Who tells a finer tale than any of us. Silence does."
- Isak Dinesen
(Related: Silence)
"Silence is the mother of truth."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Mother, Truth, Silence)
"Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence."
- Dorothy Dix
(Related: Soul, Confession, Grave, Punishment, Secrets, Silence, Weakness)
"The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government."
- William O. Douglas
(Related: Government, Constitution, Right, Silence)
"There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do."
- William Drummond
(Related: Love, Silence, Tongue)
"Put a bridle on thy tongue; set a guard before thy lips, lest the words of thine own mouth destroy thy peace... on much speaking cometh repentance, but in silence is safety."
- William Drummond
(Related: Peace, Repentance, Safety, Silence, Tongue, Words)
"Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night."
- George Eliot
(Related: Effect, Faces, Night, Silence, Sound, Voice)
"If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence."
- George Eliot
(Related: Life, Heart, Vision, Hearing, Silence)
"And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness."
- T. S. Eliot
(Related: Being, Books)
"Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested."
- Elizabeth I
(Related: Faith, Secrets, Silence)
"The desert has its holiness of silence, the crowd its holiness of conversation."
- Walter Elliot
(Related: Conversation, Holiness, Silence)
"She would sit by herself in the middle of the old stoe amphitheatre, with the sky's starry vault overhead, and simply listen to the great silence around her."
- Michael Ende
(Related: Old, Silence, Sky)
"Silence is safer than speech."
- Epictetus
(Related: Silence, Speech)
"Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly."
- Epictetus
(Related: Silence)
"Silence is true wisdom's best reply."
- Euripides
(Related: Wisdom, Silence)
"I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?"
- Federico Fellini
(Related: Chaos, Confusion, Meaning, Silence, Speech, Television)
"You can never get silence anywhere nowadays, have you noticed?"
- Bryan Ferry
(Related: Silence)
"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
- Harvey Fierstein
(Related: Life, Silence)
"Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly."
- Robert M. La Follette
(Related: War, Opposition, Party, Right, Silence)
"Silence is the wit of fools."
- Anatole France
(Related: Fools, Silence, Wit)
"As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Silence, Word)
"And Silence of the Lambs is a really smart book."
- Jonathan Franzen
(Related: Silence)
"In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people."
- Judy Garland
(Related: Love, People, Applause, Man, Night, Silence, Words)
"Silence is the ultimate weapon of power."
- Charles de Gaulle
(Related: Power, Silence)
"I've had every advantage in the world, despite the 18 years of silence which were nobody's fault but mine."
- Gordon Getty
(Related: Fault, Silence, World, Years)
"I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art."
- Khalil Gibran
(Related: Art, Knowledge, Affection, Ignorance, Silence)
"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers."
- Khalil Gibran
(Related: Kindness, Silence, Teachers)
"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
- Vincent Van Gogh
(Related: Voice, Will)
"I refuse to be silenced."
- Al Goldstein
"Independent media can go to where the silence is and break the sound barrier, doing what the corporate networks refuse to do."
- Amy Goodman
(Related: Corporate, Media, Silence, Sound)
"I can write best in the silence and solitude of the night, when everyone has retired."
- Zane Grey
(Related: Night, Silence, Solitude)
"A story is told as much by silence as by speech."
- Susan Griffin
(Related: Silence, Speech)
"The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair."
- Angelina Grimke
(Related: Act, Denial, Despair, Duty, May, Right, Silence)
"Silence is argument carried out by other means."
- Che Guevara
(Related: Argument, Silence)
"Some persons talk simply because they think sound is more manageable than silence."
- Margaret Halsey
(Related: Silence, Sound, Talk)
"When I talked to my medical friends about the strange silence on this subject in American medical magazines and textbooks, I gained the impression that here was a subject tainted with Socialism or with feminine sentimentality for the poor."
- Alice Hamilton
(Related: Medical, Impression, American, Friends, Poor, Sentimentality, Silence, Socialism)
"That man's silence is wonderful to listen to."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Man, Silence)
"Strong efforts may be made to deny the place, to silence the authentic, but the spirit of things will break through that silence."
- John Haynes
(Related: May, Silence, Spirit, Will)
"Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression."
- Mark Helprin
(Related: Expression, Silence)
"Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy."
- Arthur Helps
(Related: Strength, Deep, Joy, Silence)
"Silence and solitude are more distracting to me than chatter and commotion."
- Marilu Henner
(Related: Silence, Solitude)
"A man is known by the silence he keeps."
- Oliver Herford
(Related: Man, Silence)
"It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school."
- Herman Hesse
(Related: Quiet, Reverie, School, Silence, Sound)
"Silence is best."
- John Hewson
(Related: Silence)
"People are never quiet. It's go, go, go. I'm a go-getter, but you need rest and silence, just to sit around and think about things."
- Dana Hill
(Related: People, Quiet, Rest, Silence)
"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like silence, listening to silence."
- Thomas Hood
(Related: Autumn, Listening, Old, Silence)
"To silence criticism is to silence freedom."
- Sidney Hook
(Related: Criticism, Freedom, Silence)
"He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence."
- William Dean Howells
(Related: Silence)
"He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words."
- Elbert Hubbard
(Related: Silence, Will, Words)
"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Truth, Opinion, Silence)
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Music, Silence)
"When friends and lovers die and your world gets quieter; that's when the silence comes closer; that's when next isn't the least bit theoretical or abstract."
- Bruce Jackson
(Related: Friends, Lovers, Silence, World)
"We believe... that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts."
- Alfred Jarry
(Related: Applause, Silence)
"The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: Religious, Silence)
"You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword."
- Samuel Johnson
(Related: Silence, Word)
"The most profound statements are often said in silence."
- Lynn Johnston
(Related: Silence)
"Silence is refreshment for the soul."
- Wynonna Judd
(Related: Soul, Silence)
"There is no way to ease the burden. The voyage leads on from harm to harm, A land of others and of silence."
- Donald Justice
(Related: Burden, Harm, Land, Silence)
"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content."
- Helen Keller
(Related: Content, Darkness, May, Silence, State, Wonders)
"All the big powers they've silenced me. So much for free speech and choice on this fundamental human right."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Choice, Free speech, Right)
"Everything in life is speaking in spite of it's apparent silence."
- Hazrat Inayat Khan
(Related: Life, Silence)
"The Man Without a Country, was an orator no one could silence and no one could answer."
- Thomas Starr King
(Related: Country, Man, Silence)
"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: Enemies, Friends, Silence, Will, Words)
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: People, Actions, Silence, Will, Words)
"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: History, People, Silence, Tragedy, Will)
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: End, Enemies, Friends, Silence, Will, Words)
"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: People, Cruelty, Oppression, Silence, Tragedy)
"I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language."
- Ben Kingsley
(Related: Cinema, Language, Silence, Theater)
"We should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound."
- Zoltan Kodaly
(Related: Music, Silence, Sound, Will)
"One of the greatest sounds of them all - and to me it is a sound - is utter, complete silence."
- Andre Kostelanetz
(Related: Silence, Sound)
"The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing."
- Nicholas D. Kristof
(Related: Media, News, Silence, Television)
"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from."
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
(Related: Life, Purpose, Blessings, Events, Mistakes, Silence)
"Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body."
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
(Related: Love, Strength, Body, Dying, Silence, Will, Words)
"The intellectual debility of contemporary conservatism is indicated by its silence on all important matters."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Conservatism, Silence)
"After The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, the audience would like to know where, when, and who arrests Hannibal Lecter for the first time. This is the story of Red Dragon."
- Dino De Laurentiis
(Related: Time, First, Silence)
"The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women."
- Ursula K. LeGuin
(Related: Power, Women, Silence)
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
- Abraham Lincoln
(Related: Men, Cowards, Protest, Silence, Sin)
"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Related: Life, Darkness, Night, Ocean, Ships, Silence, Voice)
"With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand."
- Federico Garcia Lorca
(Related: Fear, Road, Silence)
"Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Quality, Literary, Racism, Writers)
"I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Women, Fear, Respect, Silence, Voice)
"Your silence will not protect you."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Silence, Will)
"African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence."
- Wangari Maathai
(Related: Women, Fear, Strength, African, Silence)
"Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered."
- Archibald MacLeish
(Related: Opinions, Silence)
"To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold - brothers who know now they are truly brothers."
- Archibald MacLeish
(Related: Brothers, Earth, Now, Silence)
"Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves."
- Maurice Maeterlinck
(Related: Fashion, Silence)
"To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man."
- Marcel Marceau
(Related: Thoughts, Man, Silence)
"In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people."
- Marcel Marceau
(Related: People, Reflection, Silence)
"Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music."
- Marcel Marceau
(Related: Music, Silence)
"The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell."
- Joyce Maynard
(Related: Silence)
"I continued to protect him with my silence."
- Joyce Maynard
(Related: Silence)
"Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart."
- Phyllis McGinley
(Related: Heart, Silence, Words)
"It now becomes clear why the Bush Administration has been vigorously opposing congressional hearings. The Bush Administration has been engaged in a conspiracy of silence."
- Cynthia McKinney
(Related: Now, Silence)
"Ever since I came to Congress in 1992, there are those who have been trying to silence my voice. I've been told to "sit down and shut up" over and over again. Well, I won't sit down and I won't shut up until the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people."
- Cynthia McKinney
(Related: Truth, People, American, Congress, Silence, Trying, Voice)
"Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Darkness, Silence, Sound, Space)
"These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness."
- Anthony de Mello
(Related: Politics, Religion, Work, Progress, Wealth, Awareness, Compassion, Learning, Silence, Will, Worship)
"No one nor anything can silence me."
- Dmitri Mendeleev
(Related: Silence)
"Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie."
- Sam Mendes
(Related: Actors, Relationships, Silence, Words)
"The voice of the intelligence is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance."
- Karl A. Menninger
(Related: Intelligence, Anger, Fear, Desire, Hate, Ignorance, Shame, Voice)
"Speech is the small change of silence."
- George Meredith
(Related: Change, Silence, Speech)
"Now all my teachers are dead except silence."
- W. S. Merwin
(Related: Now, Silence, Teachers)
"What I am looking for... is an immobile movement, something which would be the equivalent of what is called the eloquence of silence, or what St. John of the Cross, I think it was, described with the term 'mute music'."
- Joan Miro
(Related: Music, Eloquence, Silence)
"Silence is not only golden, it is seldom misquoted."
- Bob Monkhouse
(Related: Silence)
"The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint."
- Marianne Moore
(Related: Feeling, Restraint, Silence)
"Oppression does not make for hearts as big as all outdoors. Oppression makes us big and small. Expressive and silenced. Deep and dead."
- Cherrie Moraga
(Related: Deep, Oppression)
"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
- John Morley
(Related: Man)
"Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously."
- Lance Morrow
(Related: Power, Forget, May, Silence)
"Once I was condemned to three months' absolute silence. As I could not speak, I wrote a book."
- Nana Mouskouri
(Related: Months, Silence)
"Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story."
- Bob Newhart
(Related: Work, Doubt, Silence)
"Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure."
- Henri Nouwen
(Related: Cure, Listening, Meaning, Silence, Words)
"If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space."
- Joyce Carol Oates
(Related: Car, Driving, Housework, Silence, Space, Walking, Writer, Writing)
"A moment of silence is not inherently religious."
- Sandra Day O'Connor
(Related: Religious, Silence)
"Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about."
- Saskya Pandita
(Related: Birds, Cause, Danger, Misfortune, Silence, Speech, Talking)
"He knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech."
- Gilbert Parker
(Related: Lie, Evil, Silence, Speech)
"Silence is the pause in me when I am near to God."
- Arvo Part
(Related: God, Silence)
"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."
- Blaise Pascal
(Related: Infinite, Silence)
"There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you in silence, I entrust them to you in the way that you know best."
- Pope John Paul II
(Related: Mother, People, Name, Nations, Silence)
"Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history."
- Octavio Paz
(Related: History, Nature, Expression, Feeling, Language, Literature, Sense, Silence)
"True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment."
- William Penn
(Related: Body, Mind, Rest, Silence, Sleep, Spirit)
"If there's a silence in a room I'll try to fill it as soon as humanly possible."
- Matthew Perry
(Related: Silence)
"Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed."
- Pindar
(Related: Truth, Man, Silence)
"I shall assume that your silence gives consent."
- Plato
(Related: Silence)
"Your silence gives consent."
- Plato
(Related: Silence)
"Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech."
- Plutarch
(Related: Wisdom, Silence, Speech)
"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be."
- Edgar Allan Poe
(Related: Genius, Saying, Silence)
"If I cannot understand my friend's silence, I will never get to understand his words."
- J. Enoch Powell
(Related: Friend, Silence, Will, Words)
"For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence."
- Philip Pullman
(Related: Music, Listening, Lying, Reason, Silence, Writing)
"We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever."
- Philip Pullman
(Related: Time, Books, Rights, Silence, Wrongs)
"Silence is better than unmeaning words."
- Pythagoras
(Related: Silence, Words)
"It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few."
- Pythagoras
(Related: Silence, Value, Word, Words)
"Love is not a fire to be shut up in a soul. Everything betrays us: voice, silence, eyes; half-covered fires burn all the brighter."
- Jean Racine
(Related: Love, Soul, Eyes, Fire, Silence, Voice)
"Indeed if we Christians so tell our story that Judaism is silenced, then we have not spoken rightly of Christ."
- Timothy Radcliffe
(Related: Christ, Judaism)
"Today, our actions must be motivated only by our intense desire to achieve a just and lasting peace. The compassion and charity of the American people should be reflected in this legislation, though sadly, they are silenced."
- Nick Rahall
(Related: Peace, People, Actions, American, Charity, Compassion, Desire, Legislation, Today)
"I always believed that my silence on several topics will be an advantage in the long run."
- Aishwarya Rai
(Related: Silence, Will)
"Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom."
- Myrtle Reed
(Related: Wisdom, Reputation, Silence, Will)
"Lying is done with words and also with silence."
- Adrienne Rich
(Related: Lying, Silence, Words)
"As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this."
- Paul Robeson
(Related: Peace, Artist, Silence, Will)
"We should silence anyone who opposes the right to freedom of speech."
- Boyle Roche
(Related: Freedom, Right, Silence, Speech)
"Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrust himself."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Distrust, Man, Silence)
"My first college roommate greeted me with a shocked silence followed by, 'So... you're black.'"
- Al Roker
(Related: College, First, Silence)
"Silence is more musical than any song."
- Christina Rossetti
(Related: Silence, Song)
"Silence is so accurate."
- Mark Rothko
(Related: Silence)
"Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death."
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Death, Sadness, Silence)
"If we don't bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence."
- Jane Rule
(Related: Life, People, Right, Silence)
"Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts."
- Margaret Lee Runbeck
(Related: Friends, Saying)
"So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public."
- Marquis de Sade
(Related: Chastity, Laws, Opinion, Privacy, Public, Silence, Today)
"Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises."
- Margaret Sanger
(Related: Medical, Church, Past, Profession, Silence, State, Today, Woman)
"I can hear the roar of women's silence."
- Thomas Sankara
(Related: Women, Silence)
"The only way to silence a room that's laughing at you is to sort of take over."
- Peter Sarsgaard
(Related: Silence)
"And new people come in, and it doesn't go along with their politics, and they fire me, end the column, silence a voice in Los Angeles. They can't silence it nationally, but they are able to do it there."
- Robert Scheer
(Related: Politics, People, End, Fire, Silence, Voice)
"Great souls suffer in silence."
- Friedrich Schiller
(Related: Silence)
"Silence is the sure sign that you're on your way out in Hollywood."
- Budd Schulberg
(Related: Hollywood, Silence)
"But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in sleep."
- Karl Shapiro
(Related: Love, Satisfaction, Silence, Sleep, Smile)
"Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Expression, Silence)
"Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Men, Silence)
"I know you are going to be embarrassed. We're all embarrassed by it, but to hide the embarrassment... silence has never protected women or helped them. We need to talk about it more with our, you know - whoever - our friends, our family."
- Cybill Shepherd
(Related: Family, Women, Embarrassment, Friends, Silence, Talk)
"Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them."
- Charles Simic
(Related: Experience, Poetry, Silence, Words)
"Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue."
- Charles Simmons
(Related: Argument, Bigotry, Fire, Intolerance, Old, Persecution, Silence, Tongue)
"Listen to the sound of silence."
- Paul Simon
(Related: Silence, Sound)
"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenements halls and whispered in the sounds of silence."
- Paul Simon
(Related: Silence, Words)
"My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence."
- Edith Sitwell
(Related: Music, Hobbies, Listening, Reading, Silence)
"Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Silence, Speech)
"Silence is an ornament for women."
- Sophocles
(Related: Women, Silence)
"Don't you know that silence supports the accuser's charge?"
- Sophocles
(Related: Silence)
"New-Year's Day arriving, and the ministers, to whom I wrote, remaining silent, I consider their silence as evidence, that they cannot prove what I said not to be from the Lord, and have therefore published as I was directed."
- Joanna Southcott
(Related: Day, Silence)
"When you're comfortable with someone you love, the silence is the best. And, that's how me and J. are. When we're in a room together, we don't have to say anything. It's for real."
- Britney Spears
(Related: Love, Silence)
"A small silence came between us, as precise as a picture hanging on the wall."
- Jean Stafford
(Related: Silence)
"Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence."
- George Steiner
(Related: Language, Reality, Rest, Silence)
"One of the best things about paintings is their silence - which prompts reflection and random reverie."
- Mark Stevens
(Related: Reflection, Reverie, Silence)
"The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing, and avoids your eye."
- Robert Louis Stevenson
(Related: Friend, Correction, Eye, Nothing, Silence)
"The cruelest lies are often told in silence."
- Robert Louis Stevenson
(Related: Lies, Silence)
"I have a big problem with piped music. I like either silence or to listen to it properly."
- Sting
(Related: Music, Silence)
"A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence."
- Leopold Stokowski
(Related: Music, Musicians, Silence)
"At the time, acid made me consider questions of reality, the difference, as someone said, between words and silence. It also brought back a lot of latent religious feelings in me that I had turned my back on."
- Robert Stone
(Related: Time, Feelings, Difference, Questions, Reality, Religious, Silence, Words)
"The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence."
- Rabindranath Tagore
(Related: Truth, Sea, Silence, Water, Words)
"In prayerful silence you must look into your own heart. No one can tell you better than yourself what comes between you and God. Ask yourself. Then listen!"
- Johannes Tauler
(Related: God, Heart, Silence)
"Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying."
- Johannes Tauler
(Related: Wisdom, Knowledge, Dying, Humility, Man, School, Silence, Spirit)
"Their silence is praise enough."
- Terence
(Related: Praise, Silence)
"We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls."
- Mother Teresa
(Related: Nature, God, Friend, Flowers, Moon, Silence, Stars, Sun, Trees)
"Silence is the unbearable repartee."
- Alexander Theroux
(Related: Silence)
"It's time for women to make their voices heard. Their silence on the subject of war and peace is deafening."
- Helen Thomas
(Related: Peace, Time, War, Women, Silence)
"In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Silence, Tragedy, Words)
"A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing."
- John Tillotson
(Related: Nothing, Obligation, Silence, Word)
"The most boring thing in the world? Silence."
- Justin Timberlake
(Related: Silence, World)
"I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods."
- Georg Trakl
(Related: God, Silence, Spring)
"It's very important in life to know when to shut up. You should not be afraid of silence."
- Alex Trebek
(Related: Life, Silence)
"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
- Martin Farquhar Tupper
(Related: Eloquence, Silence, Speech)
"Silence is a source of great strength."
- Lao Tzu
(Related: Strength, Silence)
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence."
- Leonardo da Vinci
(Related: Authority, Nothing, Silence)
"Let the veil of silence fall presently over what happened afterwards. Silence, too, can speak out."
- Lech Walesa
(Related: Silence)
"I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force."
- Lech Walesa
(Related: Sympathy, Force, Nation, Past, Silence, State, World)
"No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow."
- Alice Walker
(Related: Friend, Right, Silence)
"I think so, Silence of the Lambs was a great, suspenseful thriller and I would expect Red Dragon to be similar. And I think it's very character driven."
- Emily Watson
(Related: Character, Silence)
"Nature's music is never over; her silences are pauses, not conclusions."
- Mary Webb
(Related: Music, Nature)
"With the exception of the New York Times, Fox news, and Lou Dobbs of CNN, and talk radio, the rest of the mainstream media has basically been silenced like a bunch of dumb monkeys."
- Curt Weldon
(Related: Dumb, Media, News, Rest, Talk)
"I like to sit in my backyard. I go out on the hammock and sit in silence and kind of meditate. Nature is calming, and it's nice to go out there and clear my head."
- Devon Werkheiser
(Related: Nature, Silence)
"CAIR officials or former officials have been arrested on charges related to terrorism yet all it offers is silence and stonewalling in discussing what are its real motives."
- Paul Weyrich
(Related: Motives, Silence, Terrorism)
"Silence may be as variously shaded as speech."
- Edith Wharton
(Related: May, Silence, Speech)
"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
- Elie Wiesel
(Related: Neutrality, Silence, Suffering)
"The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it."
- Simon Wiesenthal
(Related: Home, Forgiveness, Church, Denial, Parents, Schools, Silence)
"Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live."
- Shelley Winters
(Related: Movies, Deep, Now, Silence, Sound, Television)
"My hope and prayer is that the body of Christ in America will awake with holy boldness, a boldness content neither with silence nor mere words but that backs up those words with action and results."
- Frank R. Wolf
(Related: Action, Hope, America, Body, Boldness, Christ, Content, Prayer, Results, Silence, Will, Words)
"Women have seldom sufficient employment to silence their feelings; a round of little cares, or vain pursuits frittering away all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of sense."
- Mary Wollstonecraft
(Related: Women, Feelings, Strength, Mind, Sense, Silence)
"If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?"
- Steven Wright
(Related: Mimes)
"If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?"
- Steven Wright
"Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one!"
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(Related: Mystery, Silence)
"Silence may be golden, but can you think of a better way to entertain someone than to listen to him?"
- Brigham Young
(Related: May, Silence)
"In silence - and in self-defense - I figured things out in my own little way."
- Loretta Young
(Related: Self, Silence)