Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.

We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say.

If you say three things, you don't say anything.

Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.

Silence is said to be golden, but the best fools the world has ever produced had nothing to say on the subject

Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.

How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.

A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.

You can't improve on saying nothing.

If you have something to say and say nothing, you are really telling a lie.

Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.

the modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.

They talk most who have the least to say.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

I am not eloquent.

And 'tis remarkable that they talk most who have the least to say.

Speech was given to the ordinary sort or men, whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it.

Silence is not only golden, it is seldom misquoted.

Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another.

You say it best, when you say nothing at all.

Using vague, slippery or just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it's not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you're saying something instead of nothing.

This trial has developed in the most remarkable manner, the insane love of speaking among public men. We are wading knee deep in words, words, words ….

We [journalists] have a tendency to go on talking even when we have nothing to say.