George is a radio announcer, and when he walks under a bridge… you can’t hear him talk.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Silence is safer than speech.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

Playing bridge is a pretty old fashioned thing in a way that I really like.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Some guy hit my fender, and I told him, ‚Be fruitful and multiply,‘ but not in those words.

I am rather inclined to silence.

I like talking. I like acting.

Laws are silent in time of war.

If you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn’t speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn’t speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.

As Bromberger observed, rules are understood to be elements of the computational systems that determine the sound and meaning of the infinite array of expressions of a language; the information so derived is accessed by other systems in language use.

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

I was afraid that science-fiction buffs and everybody would say things like, ‚You know, there’s no sound in outer space.‘

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

I like the sound a typewriter makes.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

In time of war the laws are silent.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Most people have no idea what something would sound like if it wasn’t an MP3.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

He who talks more is sooner exhausted.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn’t just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

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

Silence is the mother of truth.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the delight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

I’ve often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.