As an entrepreneur, public speaking is a must. You will be asked to speak in front of groups, clients and prospects on a regular basis. These speeches don’t have to be daunting though! Check out these top speech quotes to help get you motivated. They are sure to inspire you and give you the boost you need to give your best speech yet. From Winston Churchill’s famous words of encouragement to Maya Angelou’s reminder that everyone has a story, these quotations will make you feel empowered and ready to take on any audience.

1. A confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches. — Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

2. Free speech not only lives, it rocks! — Oprah Winfrey

3. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town–crier spoke my lines. — Shakespeare

4. Democracy is about the dialogue — protest is about initiating the dialogue and freedom of speech is about respecting each other’s dialogue.

5. Speech one may regret, Silence no sorrow begets, Humility be born before honour, Soft answer turns wrath’s corner — Munindra Misra, PT. Kanhaiya Lal Misra–My Father

6. Definite speech means clarity of mind. — Mark Twain

7. Sarah Palin uses me as a laugh line in her stump speeches. If you’re willing to turn me into a joke, you should also be willing to talk to me. — Rachel Maddow

8. I wondered why humans were even given the gift of speech at all. We no longer needed it — we’ve forgotten to talk about anything. We only waste it.

9. My father always said that too many words cheapened the value of a man’s speech. — Patricia Briggs, Raven’s Shadow

10. Not by speeches and votes of the majority, are the great questions of the time decided–that was the error of 1848 and 1849–but by iron and blood. — Otto Von Bismarck

11. I forgot Dumbledore trashed Hogwarts, refused to resign and ran off to the forest to make speeches to angry trolls. — J. K. Rowling

12. A story is told as much by silence as by speech. — Susan Griffin

13. Disease is a speech of the psyche. …the psyche is a polyglot, for if it converts fear into symptoms it also converts hope. — Saul Bellow

14. Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. — Norman Vincent Peale

15. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town–crier spoke my lines. — Shakespeare

16. Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance. — William O. Douglas

17. This is about turning the federal government into the speech police. — Mitch Mcconnell

18. He was a consummate politician––which is to say he was given to expedient speech and lacked even a vestigial spine. — Nick Taylor, The Disagreement

19. Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. — Robert Green Ingersoll

20. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you, trippingly on the tongue. — William Shakespeare

21. The substance of The eminent socialist gentleman’s speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that The real sin is taking a loss. — Winston Churchill

22. I’m going to make a long speech because I’ve not had the time to prepare a short one. — Winston Churchill

23. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town–crier spoke my lines. — Shakespeare

24. Songs won’t save the planet, but neither will books or speeches. — Pete Seeger

25. We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. — Yishan Wong

26. And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. — Thomas Merton

27. Clarity of thought is a must for brevity in speech. — Somali K Chakrabarti, Lei: A wreath for your soul

28. I don’t watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched ‘The King’s Speech’ on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple. — Vivienne Westwood

29. What we love usually manages to get into our conversation. What is down in the well of the heart will come up in the bucket of the speech. — Vance Havner

30. Philosophy is an odd thing. When we use the word in everyday speech, you know, you sometimes hear it hilariously. — Stephen Fry

31. The United States is a land of free speech. Nowhere is speech freer–not even here where we sedulously cultivate it even in its most repulsive form. — Winston Churchill

32. A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up. — Neil Gaiman

33. Tell X that speech is not dirty silence Clarified. It is silence made still dirtier. — Wallace Stevens

34. Eloquent speech is not from lip to ear, but rather from heart to heart. — William Jennings Bryan

35. It is not set speeches at the moment of battle that render soldiers brave. — Napoleon Bonaparte

36. People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have for example freedom of thought instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation. — Soren Kierkegaard

37. If you’re not going to use your free speech to criticize your own government, then what the hell is the point of having it? — Michelle Templet

38. A thought Of that late death took all my heart for speech. — William Butler Yeats

39. As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice. — Samuel Johnson

40. Completely devastating, speechless. i am just…, she can’t say anything more about this, so i would ask you to respect her wishes, please. — Serena Williams

41. All Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech. We now have, I think, the most free and open system we’ve had in modern times. — Mitch Mcconnell

42. Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing — but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

43. When I hear Governor Mitt Romney in his speech talk about how the Republican Party must stand for legitimate conservative values. They don’t. — Rush Limbaugh

44. Freedom of speech gives you the right to stay silent. — Neil Gaiman

45. Every now and then, you get people who tend to forget what this country is about, which is a melting pot of races and cultures and freedom of speech. — Maynard James Keenan

46. There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press — Mark Twain

47. Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice. — Vladimir Lenin

48. We have freedom of speech, but you got to watch what you say. — Tracy Morgan

49. I suspect that music has qualities both of speech and writing–partly built in, partly individually constructed–and this goes on all through one’s life. — Oliver Sacks

50. When the vain speaker has sat down, and the people say ‘what a good speech, ‘ it still takes an ounce to balance an ounce. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In conclusion, speech is an incredibly powerful tool that can be used for both good and bad. We should use our words wisely and use them to inspire and uplift those around us. Quotes about speech are a wonderful way to remind us of the power of our words. Whether you are trying to motivate yourself or a loved one, these quotes can give you the words you need to make a positive difference in the world.