Silence is an endangered quantity in our time... Silence, embraced, stuns with its presence, its pregnant reality—a reality that does not negate reason and argument, but puts them in their place. — Krista Tippett
Silence is better than unmeaning words. — Pythagoras
The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails. — William Shakespeare
Space has no "existence." "To exist" literally means "to stand out." You cannot understand space because it doesn't stand out. Although in itself it has no existence, it enables everything else to exist. Silence has no existence either, nor does the unmanifested. — Eckhart Tolle
Accumulate power in silence and become a dynamo of spirituality. — Swami Vivekananda
The Power Of Silence Quotes
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. — John Stuart Mill
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens. — Judith Lewis Herman
Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful. — Amy Goodman
Work hard in silence, let your success be the noise
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. — Czeslaw Milosz
For the Order wishes to be secret and to work in silence; for thus it is better secured from the oppression of the ruling powers, and because this secrecy gives a greater zest to the whole. — Adam Weishaupt
Advent, this powerful liturgical season that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs of the attention he has for each one of us. — Pope Benedict XVI
You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing everything with logic. If words control your that means everyone can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. — Barack Obama
Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously. — Lance Morrow
The power of nature exists in its silence. Human words cannot encode the meaning because human language has access only to the shadow of meaning. — Malidoma Patrice Some
A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place. — Robert McKee
Silence Is Loud Quotes
The dead are silent because they live, just as we chatter so loudly to try to make ourselves forget that we are dying. Their silence is really their call to me, the assurance of their immortal love for me. — Karl Rahner
A loud voice is not always angry; a soft voice not always to be dismissed; and a well-placed silence can be the indisputable last word. — Gloria Naylor
Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence. — Anne Lamott
Silence is a source of great strength.
Silence is a lie. Silence has a loud voice. It shouts, "Nothing important is happening - don't worry." So when something important IS going on, silence is a lie." — A. M. Rosenthal
I have a need of silence and of stars.
Too much is said too loudly. I am dazed.
The silken sound of whirled infinity
Is lost in voices shouting to be heard. — William Alexander Percy
He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent; still less how to act with vigour and decision. - Who hastens to the end is silent: loudness is impotence. — Johann Kaspar Lavater
The silence of those in positions of influence in the church who know, or have a strong suspicion, that being gay is a nonpathological minority variant in the human condition drives me crazy, far crazier than I am driven by any loud-mouthed purveyor of hateful nonsense. — James Alison
There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do; there are movements that are involuntary proofs of what the soul feels. — Vittorio Alfieri
Sometimes silence is the most effective tool to make impact, and sometimes loud and big is the trick. — Per Hallberg
Silence Speaks Quotes
Speak only if it improves upon the silence. — Mahatma Gandhi
If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks. — T. S. Eliot
Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly. — Mahatma Gandhi
Whatever your grade or position, if you know how and when to speak, and when to remain silent, your chances of real success are proportionately increased. — Ralph C. Smedley
Let us always guard our tongue; not that it should always be silent, but that it should speak at the proper time. — Sayings
There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. — Toni Morrison
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak. — Baruch Spinoza
Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free. — Arundhati Roy
The law of silence: Speak little. Say only what you must. Speak only when necessary. Your oratory should be deeds, not words. You accomplish: let others talk. — Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Silent Power Quotes
A waterfall cannot be silent, just as the wisdom! When they speak, the voice of power speaks! — Mehmet Murat Ildan
When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful. — Malala Yousafzai
All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest. — Beatrix Potter
Part of me has always resisted the Western clichéd image of Muslim women, depicting them as nothing more than silent victims. My art, without denying 'repression,' is a testimony to unspoken female power and the continuing protest in Islamic culture. — Shirin Neshat
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. — Xenocrates
You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No. — Alison McGhee
The easiest way to get touch with this universal power is through silent Prayer. Shut your eyes, shut your mouth, and open your heart. This is the golden rule of prayer. Prayer should be soundless words coming forth from the centre of your heart filled with love. — Amit Ray
A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power. — Rachel Carson
Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues. — Baruch Spinoza
Expressed In Silence Quotes
I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light - an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art. — Louis Kahn
Silence is full of the unspoken, of deeds undone, of confessions to secret love, and of wonders not expressed. Our truth is hidden in our silence, Yours and I. — Ahmad Shamloo
Voting is not an act of political freedom. It is an act of political conformity. Those who refuse to vote are not expressing silence. They are screaming in the politician's ear: 'You do not represent me. This is not a process in which my voice matters. I do not believe you.' — Wendy McElroy
If this is how science operates, by silencing those who express opposing views rather than by debating with them, then science is dead and we are in a new era of the Inquisition. — Graham Hancock
An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way. — Harriet Lerner
In the action of no-action (wu-wei), a cardinal aspect of the true creative process is set forth. In wu-wei, the mind is silenced and the work is allowed to express itself. — John Daido Loori
Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased. — Anton Chekhov
The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms - this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, verbal concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color. — William S. Burroughs
The silences express so much and are so crucial in music, and prose does not allow for the creation of these silences, these white spaces on the page or the computer screen. — Pattiann Rogers
In the greatest art, one is always aware of things that cannot be said. . .of the contradiction between expression and the presence of the inexpressible. Stylistic devices are also techniques of avoidance. The most potent elements of a work of art are, often, its silences. — Susan Sontag
Silence Is Quotes
Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap. — Hildegard of Bingen
Last night
I begged the Wise One to tell me
the secret of the world.
Gently, gently, he whispered,
"Be quiet,
the secret cannot be spoken,
It is wrapped in silence." — Rumi
Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation. — Isaac Newton
A friend is someone you can be alone with and have nothing to do and not be able to think of anything to say and be comfortable in the silence. — Sheryl Condie
I have desired to do good, but I have not desired to make noise, because I have felt that noise did no good and that good made no noise. — Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence. — Max Picard
In wilderness people can find the silence and the solitude and the noncivilized surroundings that can connect them once again to their evolutionary heritage, and through an experience of the eternal mystery, can give them a sense of the sacredness of all creation. — Sigurd F. Olson
The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenements halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. — Paul Simon
I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. — Chaim Potok
A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening. — Bernie Krause
My real log is written in the sea and sky; the sails talking with the rain and the stars amid the sounds of the sea, the silences full of secret things between my boat and me, like the times I spent as a child listening to the forest talk. — Bernard Moitessier
Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence. — Robert Fripp
That deep silence has a melody of its own, a sweetness unknown amid the harsh discords of the world's sounds. — Paul Brunton
The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time. — Maureen Dowd
The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing. — John Cage
It is like being in the desert. At first you listen to the absence of sounds and call it silence. Then suddenly you may be taken by the presence of stillness where you are one with listening itself. — Jean Klein
Being Silent Quotes
Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak–and speak in such a way that people will remember it. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb. — Pythagoras
A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent. — John Calvin
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. — Elie Wiesel
It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest. — Abraham Lincoln
When the wisdom speaks, be silent. Do not waste your candle when the sun is there. — Mehmet Murat Ildan
O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you; As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me. — Walt Whitman
Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stands up and protests. The protest need not be merely physical-the throwing of stones and bullets-if it is mental, spiritual; if it expresses itself in silent, persistent dissatisfaction, the cost to the oppressor is terrific. — W. E. B. Du Bois
Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you, remember Christ crucified and be silent. — John of the Cross
If we understood the power of our thoughts, we would guard them more closely. If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. In our thoughts and words we create our own weaknesses and our own strengths. Our limitations and joys begin in our hearts. We can always replace negative with positive. — Betty Eadie
Never try to stop the thoughts.
If you try to stop the thoughts they will become bigger and greater and they will win. Because the mind appears to be very powerful.
Yet in reality the mind does not exist.
There is no mind.
There is no such thing as a mind.
So when you sit in the silence you observe, you watch, you become the witness. — Robert Adams
Humility collects the soul into a single point by the power of silence. A truly humble man has no desire to be known or admired by others, but wishes to plunge from himself into himself, to become nothing, as if he had never been born. When he is completely hidden to himself in himself, he is completely with God — Isaac of Nineveh
There's been an awful lot of silence in make culture about this ongoing tragedy of men's violence against women and children... we need to break that silence, and we need more men to do that. — Jackson Katz
Unchaste abandon and the self-surrender of the soul to the world of sensuality paralyzes the primordial powers of the moral person: the ability to perceive, in silence, the call of reality, and to make, in the retreat of this silence, the decision appropriate to the concrete situation of concrete action. — Josef Pieper
Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. — Victor Hugo
In the silences I make in the midst of the turmoil of life I have appointments with God. From these silences I come forth with spirit refreshed, and with a renewed sense of power. I hear a voice in the silences, and become increasingly aware that it is the voice of God. — David Brainerd
On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already? — Thomas Jefferson
Part of what makes a situation traumatic is not talking about it. Talking reduces trauma symptoms. When we don't talk about trauma, we remain emotionally illiterate. Our most powerful feelings go unnamed and unspoken. — Tian Dayton
To obtain the pure silence necessary for the disciple, the heart and emotions, the brain and its intellectualisms, have to be put aside. Both are but mechanisms, which will perish with the span of man's life. It is the essence beyond, that which is the motive power, and makes man live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and act. — Mabel Collins
I found that my wounds begin to heal when the voices of those endangered by silence are given power. The silence of hopelessness, of despair buried in the depths of poverty, violence, racism are more deadly than bullets. The gift of light, in our compassion, our listening, our works of love is the gift of life to ourselves. — Janice Mirikitani
He had somehow, with all his modesty, the rare faculty of controlling his superiors as well as his subordinates. He outfaced Stanton, captivated the President, and even compelled acquiescence or silence from that dread source of paralyzing power, the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. — Joshua Chamberlain
It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him. — William Barclay
Not only a truer knowledge, but a greater power comes to one in the quietude and silence of a mind that, instead of bubbling on the surface, can go to its own depths and listen. — Sri Aurobindo
The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way. Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence. — Robert Bresson
None of our political writers . . . take notice of any more than three estates, namely, Kings, Lords and Commons . . . passing by in silence that very large and powerful body which form the fourth estate in the community . . . the Mob. — Henry Fielding
Because the Nazi venom worked its way even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest; because an all-powerful police sought to force us into silence every word became as precious as a declaration of principle; because we were persecuted, each of our gestures carried the weight of a commitment. — Jean-Paul Sartre
Successful crime is dignified with the name of virtue; the good become the slaves of the wicked; might makes right; fear silences the power of the law. — Seneca
There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence. — Elizabeth Kostova
These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn't even know existed. — Ricky Martin
There's something about looking at Super 8 films that is so evocative. You could argue it's the resolution of the film somehow because they aren't crystal clear and perfect,so there is a kind of gauzy layer between you and what you see. You could argue it's the silence of them. You could say it's the sound of the projector that creates a moodiness. But there's something about looking at analog movies that's infinitely more powerful than digital. — J. J. Abrams
Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. — Thomas Hardy
She wants her silence to be final. Here, more than anyplace else, she wants her memory uncontested. She does not want me talking to others, gathering other stories, looking into the remnants of my father's past. When she is silent, she wants those things about which she refuses to speak to remain as quiet as the tomb. That is the ultimate power of stories. They take on themselves the decision about what will be remembered and what will be told. The part of the past she claims most fiercely is the part she wants forgotten. — Richard White
Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant. — Victor Hugo
The Solitary answered: Such a Form Full well I recollect. We often crossed Each other's path; but, as the Intruder seemed Fondly to prize the silence which he kept, And I as willingly did cherish mine, We met, and passed, like shadows. I have heard, From my good Host, that being crazed in brain By unrequited love, he scaled the rocks, Dived into caves, and pierced the matted woods,In hope to find some virtuous herb of power To cure his malady! — William Wordsworth
[Words] cling to the very core of our memories and lie there in silence until a new desire reawakens them and recharges them with loving energy. That is one of the qualities of love that moves me most, their capacity for transmitting love. Like water, words are a wonderful conductor of energy. And the most powerful, transforming energy is the energy of love. — Laura Esquivel
In Conclusion
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