All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Robert Louis Stevenson
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. Frederick Douglass
It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher. George Whitefield
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at which the hearer is permitted to laugh. Quentin Crisp
For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns. His hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it that he might learn by experiment what argument taught. Roger Bacon
