Quote#Speech
I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it…
Quote byRutherford B. Hayes · 1822–1893
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926), Diary (20 November 1872).
English (original)
I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.
— Rutherford B. Hayes
More from Rutherford B. Hayes
It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear.
If he had it would have deprived me of two reasons for feeling satisfied with this afternoon - one was that I escaped by leaving the other end of the city, and the other, what I gained by enjoying with you this pleasant occasion.
The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.
We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause …
The President of the United States of necessity owes his election to office to the suffrage and zealous labors of a political party, the members of which cherish with ardor and regard as of essential importance the principles of their …
It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.