Skip to content

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.

— Rutherford B. Hayes Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)

Another quote →

Topics

Silence

More quotes by Rutherford B. Hayes

We can travel longer, night and day, without losing our spirits than almost any persons we ever met.

Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)

Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.

The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (1991)

The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.

The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital.

Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)

Perhaps the happiest moment of my life was then, when I saw that our line didn’t break and that the enemy’s did.

Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)

All Rutherford B. Hayes quotes →

You may also like

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox New Thought Pastels (1913)

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

George Eliot

There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.

Benedict of Nursia

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?

Federico Fellini I'm a Born Liar (2003)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Rutherford B. Hayes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.