These spoken word quotes will inspire you. The spoken word refers to oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer’s aesthetic qualities.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging spoken word quotes, spoken word sayings, and spoken word proverbs.
Best Spoken Word Quotes
- “All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.” ~ Adolf Hitler
- “Every spoken word arouses our self-will.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “While the spoken word can travel faster, you can’t take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader.” ~ Kingman Brewster, Jr.
- “A wise person speaks carefully and with truth, for every word tht passes between one’s teeth is meant for something.” ~ Molefi Kete Asante
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“The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.” ~ Marshall McLuhan
- “Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.” ~ Ted Chiang , Spoken word quotes life
- “I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.” ~ Russell Simmons
- “No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.” ~ Lascelles Abercrombie
- “All epoch-making revolutionary events have been produced not by the written, but by the spoken word.” ~ Adolf Hitler
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“It was my ambition all of my life to be master of the spoken word.” ~ Winston Churchill
- “Orphans, dead parents, lonely children at Christmas, morose spoken word recordings, everything you love about the holidays. Move the turkey over so you can fit your head in the oven.” ~ April Winchell
- “Don’t use time and words carelessly – neither can be retrieved.” ~ LeCrae
- “I have never regretted my silence. As for my speech, I have regretted it over and over again.” ~ Umar
- “Whatever is expressed is impressed. Whatever you say to yourself, with emotion, generates thoughts, ideas and behaviors consistent with those words.” ~ Brian Tracy
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“Your example, even more than your words, will be an eloquent lesson to the world.” ~ Madeleine Sophie Barat
- “We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.” ~ Winston Churchill
- “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” ~ Czeslaw Milosz
- “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.” ~ Gautama Buddha
- “Avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason boys – to woo women – and in that endeavor, laziness will not do.” ~ Robin Williams
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“The words that matter always stay.” ~ David Levithan
- “Thought is an Idea in transit, which when once released, never can be lured back, nor the spoken word recalled.” ~ Pythagoras
- “Like a beautiful flower that is colorful but has no fragrance, even well spoken words bear no fruit in one who does not put them into practice.” ~ Gautama Buddha
- “The spoken word is never really effective unless it is backed up by a life, but it is also true that the living deed is never adequate without the support the spoken word can provide.” ~ D. Elton Trueblood
- “I love words very much. I’ve always loved to talk, and I’ve always love words — the words that rest in your mouth, what words mean and how you taste them and so on. And for me the spoken word can be used almost as a gesture.” ~ Martha Graham
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“Those who overcome satan will be required to use the power of the spoken Word.” ~ T. B. Joshua
- “Paintings may not have nearly the power to convert people that the printed or spoken word has, but each man has his part to play in the human and divine drama – some persons just a few lines, others whole pages. To refuse to play one’s role at all is not the answer. It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” ~ William Kurelek
- “To be a good storyteller one must be gloriously alive. It is not possible to kindle fresh fires from burned-out embers. I have noticed that the best of the traditional storytellers whom I have heard have been those who live close to the heart of things-to the earth, the sea, wind and weather. They have been those who knew solitude, silence. They have been given unbroken time in which to feel deeply, to reach constantly for understanding. They have come to know the power of the spoken word. These storytellers have been sailors and peasants, wanderers and fisherman.” ~ Ruth Sawyer , Power of spoken word quotes
- “The first spoken word poem I ever wrote was when I was 14 and I wrote it because I was accidentally signed up for a teen poetry slam. Because I loved poetry I said that I’d try it out.” ~ Sarah Kay
- “I grew up in the spoken-word community. Before everybody had a home studio, or before we could get booked for shows, open mics were the only way to be heard by other people. It really gave me a chance to develop as a performer. Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10,000 people.” ~ Macklemore
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“Books are love letters (or apologies) passed between us, adding a layer of conversation beyond our spoken words.” ~ Donalyn Miller
- “Animals do feel like us, also joy, love, fear and pain but they cannot grasp the spoken word. It is our obligation to take their part and continue to resist the people who profit by them, who slaughter them and who torture them.” ~ Denis de Rougemont
- “Spoken word teaches that if you have the ability to express yourself and the courage to present those stories and opinions, you could be rewarded with a room full of your peers or your community who will listen.” ~ Sarah Kay
- “I was really drawn to spoken-word style poetry. I loved the rhythms, and for some reason, I was just drawn to this poetry as a way of expressing my feelings, because I didn’t have any other outlet.” ~ Matt de la Pena
- “Contention in our families drives the Spirit of the Lord away. It also drives many of our family members away. Contention ranges from a hostile spoken word to worldwide conflicts. The scriptures tell us that “Only by pride cometh contention”.” ~ Ezra Taft Benson
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“The real meaning of the spoken word has to be demonstrated by practical deeds” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “Compared to the spoken word, a picture is a pitiful thing, indeed.” ~ Charles Osgood
- “Through his spoken word, man is continually making laws for himself.” ~ Florence Scovel Shinn
- “Our spoken word first hammers a thing desired into shape. Our continued spoken word brings this shaped substance forth and clothes it with a visible body.” ~ H. Emilie Cady
- “I think you can perform any poem. But what I believe is that the best examples of spoken word poetry I’ve ever seen, are spoken word poems that, when you see them, you’re aware of the fact they need to be performed. That there’s something about that poem that you would not be able to understand if you were just reading it on a piece of paper.” ~ Sarah Kay
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“Acting for me was the gospel, the love of the spoken word.” ~ Jeanne Moreau
- “The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.” ~ Denise Duhamel
- “If I looked at some of these pieces as if this project was not spoken-word but just short anthology, I probably would have fussed with some of the sentences, you know? Syllabication and prosody and such crap. Because the printed word is etched in stone. But for reading purposes I accepted this book of texts in the manner in which I wrote them, no need to fuss. Most of the shorter stuff was written as poetry. Meaning lots of white space on the page.” ~ Richard Meltzer
- “I appreciate the written word and spoken word more, but Atonement sort of established so much of me. It was a character that didn’t really speak, and I found that a lot of the roles I was gravitating toward after that were kind of nonverbal.” ~ Saoirse Ronan
- “Khairani Barokka is a writer, spoken-word poet, visual artist and performer whose work has a strong vein of activism, particularly around disability, but also how this intersects with, for example, issues of gender – she’s campaigned for reproductive rights in her native Indonesian, and is currently studying for a PhD in disability and visual cultures at Goldsmiths. She’s written a feminist, environmentalist, anti-colonialist narrative poem, with tactile artwork and a Braille translation. How could I not publish that?” ~ Deborah Smith
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“I like spoken-word as much as the singing word.” ~ Loren Mazzacane Connors
- “And there’s wordplay and there’s rhythms and you have to be able to get the poetry out of it. You have to be able to sell my jokes. And if you’re talking about somebody like Sam Jackson, they do that. Sam Jackson can do that. Sam Jackson can turn it into the spoken word that it was always meant to be and he can sell my jokes. And Christopher Walken can do it and a lot of people can do it, all right.” ~ Quentin Tarantino
- “Music and text have several commonalities, and one is meter and rhythm. Both spoken word and music have certain regularities, and they can be sub-divided rhythmically.” ~ Jeff Britting
- “I take my spoken-word stuff extremely seriously because I feel like that’s true writing, true lyricism.” ~ Nick Cannon
- “When I was in school, I was very much into just sports, mostly basketball, and didn’t really see myself as much of a student. But once I got into college, I figured I wasn’t going to be play beyond college. I started to think what was I going to do, since I wouldn’t be able to make a living with basketball. There were a couple of things I liked to do. I wrote poetry, spoken word mostly.” ~ Matt de la Pena
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“Fifty years ago, the spoken word reigned, but during the last fifty years, the power has gone over to pictures.” ~ Pipilotti Rist
- “Moreover, the whole purpose of God’s mighty acts is to bring man to know Him by faith; and Scripture knows no foundation for faith but the spoken word of God, inviting our trust in Him on the basis of what He has done for us.” ~ J. I. Packer , God’s spoken word quotes
- “First it must be known that only a spoken word or a conventional sign is an equivocal or univocal term; therefore a mental contentor concept is, strictly speaking, neither equivocal nor univocal.” ~ William of Ockham
- “The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one. The greater the lie, the greater chance that it will be believed. All epoch-making events have been produced not by the written, but the spoken word.” ~ Adolf Hitler
- “All my big heroes are literary, writers. I’d love to meet Jimmy Hendrix or John Coltrane, but I’d much rather meet Thomas Wolfe, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Words and books have always meant a lot to me. That someone can take words and string them together to where they will move me is just a hell of a thing. It’s amazing to me; more amazing to me than music or painting. It’s always been the written word or the spoken word, like a great lecture or a great lyric, or a great poem. To me it’s just amazing. And I always aspire toward capturing that, or my version of it.” ~ Henry Rollins
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“The unspoken word never defeats one. What one does not say does not have to be explained.” ~ William Penn
- “Comedy, although it is not one of the fine arts – it’s a vulgar art, it’s one of the people’s arts, it’s the spoken word, the writing that goes into it is an art form – it’s certainly artistry.” ~ George Carlin
- “Your energy has far more power than you can even imagine. There is energy in your spoken words, in your emails, and in your physical presence.” ~ Gabrielle Bernstein
- “I work because I love it. It’s a projection of myself. It allows me to express my enthusiasm for music and film using the spoken word, which I love, and broadcasting, a medium which has always fascinated me. I’m very lucky.” ~ Paul Gambaccini
- “Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You’d run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising?” ~ David Ogilvy
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“The written word endures, the spoken word disappears” ~ Neil Postman
- “I used to be skeptical when educators and technologists predicted that we may be entering a new era of oral culture, in which audible information will be at least as important as visible information. Now that I have adopted into my own daily life a device that makes music and spoken-word files easy to access from anywhere, I have tempered my skepticism.” ~ Tom Peters
- “To me, presentations are the most powerful device. You can’t really name a movement that didn’t start with the spoken word.” ~ Nancy Duarte
- “Man’s word is his wand filled with magic and power! Man comes into the world financed by God, with all that he desires or requires already on his pathway. This supply is released through faith and the Spoken Word. If thou canst believe, all things are possible.” ~ Florence Scovel Shinn
- “The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.” ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- “Our priorities are most visible in how we use our time. Someone has said, “Three things never come back—the spent arrow, the spoken word, and the lost opportunity.” We cannot recycle or save the time allotted to us each day. With time, we have only one opportunity for choice, and then it is gone forever.” ~ Dallin H. Oaks
