Plain Speech Quotes

My plainness of speech makes people hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

My style is colloquial storytelling. It's the way we tell stories to one another - it's not writerly, it's not overdone.

Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn't about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.

The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences-makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely.' Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions.

I analyse in my own way, in very simple, no-jargon language. If somebody is talking in very complicated way, I never like that.

That is not good language which all understand not.

Speech devoted to truth should be straightforward and plain

Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Uncommon things must be said in common words.

Robert Frost: plain, strong, simple, and mean.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

I am utterly opposed to all equivocation or obscure expressions in our public acts. We are bound to say plainly what we mean to say. If we mean negotiation and compromise, let us say it distinctly and plainly instead of sending to the President a resolution on which he may put whatever interpretation he pleases.

However, I spent most of my time in a Quaker school.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

Without big words, how could many people say small things?

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary

I've been accused of being a minimalist writer. I don't like a lot of verbiage in there.

I am a woman, I am a minority person, and I speak in a very plain way. And I think that reaches people.