Chief Joseph Quotes

I believe in deeds, not words.

You can talk all day long, but if you don't do something, it's a waste.

If you want to communicate something, you'd better make sure that your design piece is well-dressed and that its teeth are fixed. At the same time, I still believe that if it is only stylistically great and it has nothing to say, it still is not going to make a lasting impression on anybody.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

Actions should speak louder than words.

I think talk is cheap - when I hear people say what they'd like to happen, I think it's empty.

The young writer should learn to spot them: words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning, but that soon burst in the air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.

Words without action mean nothing. I’ll show you.

The words that matter always stay.

Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my mother’s: Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang. Basically that translates to: "Loud farts don’t stink, and the really smelly ones don’t make a sound." In other words: When you’re full of beans, you just blow a lot of hot air. If you want to have a real impact, be deadly but silent. Oh, also recognize the difference between a bad cliché and a good quotation. My mother’s saying is a good quotation. You should use it often.

As a flower that is lovely and beautiful, but is scentless, even so fruitless is the well-spoken word of one who practices it not.

Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are wise words when spoken, but fruitless these words are when not carried out by the speaker.

People trust those leaders who show real results of their work, rather than those who just talk about the results.

True love requires action. We can speak of love all day long, we can write notes or poems that proclaim it, sing songs that praise it, and preach sermons that encourage it but until we manifest that love in action, our words are nothing but sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Anything works, as long as you write it properly.

It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.

But he had been in love once, that he knew. Once and only once, and a long time ago. And it had changed him forever. Perfect love did that to a person and this had been perfect.

Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view.

Talk and action are two different things.

A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom.

The more feedback you give to people, the better it is, as long as the feedback is objective and not critical.

Great captains do never use long orations when it comes to the point of execution.

Men who have much to say use the fewest words.

Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.