Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact - it is silence which isolates. (Thomas Mann)

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact - it is silence which isolates.

Thomas Mann

Related topics

contradictory silence speech word

Related quotes

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform. View quote
Bertrand Russell
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. View quote
Georges Clemenceau
Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find. View quote
Peter Ustinov
Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise? View quote
Federico Fellini