Yet coalitions of the kind that this emergency demands need voices capable of speaking to the many, not the few, articulating values held in common, not in contest.
For those of us who can't resist the need to speak of our travels, there's a narrow window, just a sliver, of social acceptance.
"My parents did not speak of it often, but you don't need to speak of it often for the words to have an impact," he said.
They all need to speak, of course, so baseball on TV has become a constant contest of endless chatter featuring mindless statistics.
On such a day there is no need to speak of it.
And instead of talking to many boys back at boarding school about the fight, or to anybody, really, I kept silent for quite some time, until Angus and I had the occasion — and, for me at least, the need — to speak of it years later.
We need to speak of roots in the plural because there are so many.
"We need to think of ways of speaking where we can't be targeted and closed down," says Jayati Ghosh, from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The governments of South America need to speak out forcefully on behalf of free elections and human rights in Honduras.
Change of all sorts, from a growing acceptance of the need to speak English to changing dietary habits, became the order of the day.
