Silence Quotes

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

~ William Penn

Since 1994, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have considered it politically risky to offer a plan to fix America's broken health care system. The American public, though, has paid the price for this silence as health care costs skyrocketed, millions went uninsured, and millions more grappled with financial insecurity and hardship.

~ Ron Wyden

There are few places you can find silence. Air travel could be the last fortress of solitude.

~ Regina Brett

I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force.

~ Lech Walesa

I'm literally driving in the middle of the night, and my phone rings, and my manager says, 'How would you like to be the host of the Daily Show?' I get out the car, and I didn't have legs. You know in those movies where there's an explosion? But instead of the sound of the explosion, you hear the silence. That's literally what happened.

~ Trevor Noah

Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.

~ Elizabeth I

The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.

~ Simon Wiesenthal

With its imagination and large sales, Apple has become the world's most valuable IT company. However people are starting to have doubts regarding Apple's silence on heavy metal pollution problems.

~ Ma Jun

Enjoying art is a personal matter. It's made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction.

~ Renzo Piano

From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

~ Jane Austen

Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.

~ Myrtle Reed

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

~ Paul Robeson

I like peace and solitude and silence.

~ Carla Bruni

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in sleep.

~ Karl Shapiro

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.

~ David Whyte

Some honor Cummings as the granddaddy of all American innovators in poetry and ascribe to him a diverse progeny that includes virtually any poet who considers the page a field and allows silence to be part of poetry's expressiveness.

~ Billy Collins

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

~ Charles Simic

To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.

~ George Bernard Shaw

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

~ Josh Billings

One of the things I've always enjoyed is moving around and staying fit. Physicality is such a big part of being an actor, but it's also about stillness and silence.

~ Joel Edgerton

For too long, our society has shrugged off bullying by labeling it a 'rite of passage' and by asking students to simply 'get over it.' Those attitudes need to change. Every day, students are bullied into silence and are afraid to speak up. Let's break this silence and end school bullying.

~ Linda Sanchez

At home, I love reaching out into that absolute silence, when you can hear the owl or the wind.

~ Amanda Harlech

I think to be in exile is a curse, and you need to turn it into a blessing. You've been thrown into exile to die, really, to silence you so that your voice cannot come home. And so my whole life has been dedicated to saying, 'I will not be silenced.'

~ Ariel Dorfman

To hike out alone in the desert; to sleep on the valley floor on a night with no moon, in the pitch black, just listening to the boom of silence: you can't imagine what that's like.

~ Nicole Krauss

A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement.

~ Jimmy Reid

When I'm sitting at the desk not being able to write line one, it's silence and despair! It's not so easy to put the pen to the legal pad or type the first sentence on the computer screen.

~ Erica Jong

The job of the press is to speak truth to power. And yet, for doing our job, we are persecuted. I say that these aggressive and illegal tactics to silence us - inventing arbitrary legal interpretations, over-zealous charges and disproportionate sentences - must not be permitted to succeed.

~ Sara Harrison

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

~ Sidney Hook

The entertainment industry isn't a line of work encouraged in the Persian culture. When I called my dad to say I wanted to quit medicine, there was about three minutes of silence. I'm not sure he knew what to do with himself!

~ Nazanin Boniadi