Talking quotes
5.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside talking — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man."
"The true charm of pedestrians does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking."
"Business owners are like joggers. If you stop a jogger, he goes on running on the spot. If you drag an owner away from his business, he goes on running on the spot, pawing the ground, talking business. He never stops hurtling onwards, making decisions and executing them."
"Freeman denied the claim that he was a “man of God”, saying that “the question of faith is whatever you actually believe is. We take a lot of what we're talking about in science on faith; we posit a theory, and until it's dis-proven we have faith that it's true. If the mathematics work out, then it's true, until it's proven to be untrue."
"There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were easy. For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again."
"Whenever you hear anyone talking about a cultural or even about a human problem, you should never forget to inquire who the speaker really is. The more general the problem, the more the person will smuggle his or her own personal psychology into the account he or she gives of it."
"I been trying to clean up my act with my children for a long time. And I pretty much got them all talking to me now. And they accept me as a humanoid again."
"When [Julia Marie Pacino] was 5 or 6 years old, we were in an Italian restaurant, and these people came by the table and they would start talking to me, asking me for my autograph and she just went under the table."
"A foreign correspondent, after talking to me for a while, once said: "You don't seem smart enough to be so good at what you're doing. Do you have an explanation?""
"Well, [bluntness in songwriting]'s a lot cheaper than therapy.... There's been a lot of things going on for the past 10 years that I just never really confronted, or used metaphors to do so. This time out I wanted to make sure that everyone knows what I'm talking about and where I'm coming from."
"Im happy to be a part of the conversation, if more young people are talking about fracking instead of twerking were heading in the right direction. The people that govern us dont want an active population who are politically engaged, they want passive consumers distracted by the spectacle of which I accept I am a part."
"I am so close, I may look distant. So completely mixed with you, I may look separate. So out in the open, I appear hidden. So silent, because I am constantly talking with you."
"An oak tree and a rosebush grew, Young and green together, Talking the talk of growing things- Wind and water and weather. And while the rosebush sweetly bloomed The oak tree grew so high That now it spoke of newer things- Eagles, mountain peaks and sky. "I guess you think you're pretty great," The rose was heard to cry, Screaming as loud as it possibly could To the treetop in the sky. "And now you have no time for flower talk, Now that you've grown so tall." "It's not so much that I've grown," said the tree, "It's just that you've stayed so small."
"If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking."
"There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."
"It's okay to send flowers, but don't let the flowers do all the talking. Flowers have a limited vocabulary. About the best flowers can say is that you remembered. But your words tell the rest."
"It's just natural, it's not a great disaster. People keep talking about it like it's The End of The Earth. It's only a rock group that split up, it's nothing important. You know, you have all the old records there if you want to reminisce."
"But if we are talking in terms of making progress in life, we must understand that "good enough" is very different from "best."
"Because I'm moved in writing to be irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, cause there's not enough female irrepressibility written down. I've fused my silence and repression with the entire female gender's silence and repression. I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world."
"I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one."
