Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

Mann frames speech as the basic infrastructure of civilized life: language is not merely a tool for exchanging information but the medium that keeps human beings in relation. Even contentious or “contradictory” words still acknowledge the other person and sustain a shared world in which disagreement can be negotiated. Silence, by contrast, breaks the social circuit; it withdraws recognition and can harden into estrangement. The line also implies an ethical claim: communication—however imperfect—is preferable to muteness because it preserves the possibility of understanding, reconciliation, and communal life. In this sense, speech becomes a civic duty as much as a personal expression.