[W]e are none of us very good at silence. It says too much.

Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

The world suffers a lot. Not because the violence of bad people. But because of the silence of the good people.

Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.

The tongue may be an unruly member — But silence poisons the soul.

Speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills.

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

Why are you so afraid of silence,
silence is the root of everything.
If you spiral into its void,
a hundred voices will thunder
messages you long to hear

This is happening in other parts of the world now. And you have to speak out. You can’t remain silent. Silence is complicity.

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence. Nature does utter a peep - just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don't do it. There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life's length to listening, and nothing happens. The ice rolls up, the ice rolls back, and still that single note obtains. The tension, or lack of it, is intolerable. The silence is not actually suppression: instead, it is all there is.

Those who cry out the truth to an indifferent world too often weary, fall silent or come to doubt their own wit.

It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear.

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.