When a person says one thing, but does something else, that's an indication of somebody who's not giving you the truth, or not very wise as to what they themselves can do.
Any speech that is lying.
Any speech that is obviously harmful, with an intention to harm. That's important to consider, an intention to harm, because sometimes the speech may seem to be harmful, it may feel yucky, we may hate hearing it, but it may be the best thing that we need to hear at that time. It might be a good friend giving us some strong advice. The Kalyanamitta - a good, kind, wise, spiritual friend - their speech is not always pleasant to hear, but hopefully it helps correct any problems that we're having.
All of you have had anywhere between 3, and maybe 150 interviews with me and Rosemary. For those of you who've had a lot of interviews, was there ever any time when you, didn't really like what Steve and Rosemary said? Yeah, probably, because it wasn't very nice to hear, but was it actually helpful? Most of you will probably say, "Yes, it was". So, when you're judging a person's speech, it's not always dependant on whether it's pleasant to hear, or whether it seems harmful or not. You have to go a little deeper, as to see whether it helps you, or not.
People who are just using their speech in unbeneficial ways, and it has no benefit at all, then yes, that's another indication of someone who's unwise.
A wise person, also, is going to be able to give you information from an experiential level. Most of us can tell the difference. Some people will give you book knowledge, and it sounds straight out of a book. Somebody else might give you similar information, but they have an example straight from their life that illustrates it. When a person uses examples that are very clear and very precise, that shows a different level of wisdom to someone who does not use examples. In the scriptures, the Buddha gave so many different examples, tons of examples. Rosemary and I try to give a lot of examples, too.
Many famous teachers throughout time were able to give examples. Now, giving examples is one thing, but giving examples from your own life is another thing as well, because some people can just learn the examples from their teacher, and then give you the same example over again. That still doesn't give you enough proof of their wisdom level, right? However, if a person actually has a true example from their own life, it often gives you much more confidence that this person knows what they're talking about, through experience.
Another way to judge wise speech in people, as far as the teachings go, is: if you've read enough of the scriptures, learned enough of the theory of Buddhism, then you can always compare what the teacher is saying to what you've learned from the books. I'm not saying the books are always right, but a lot of the scriptures in particular are, in my opinion, right. And a lot of the commentaries support the scriptures. So, if you personally know a lot of the scriptures, you can judge what a teacher's saying based on what you know by asking yourself, "Does this connect, does this correspond?" "Is this in proper line with what you've read in the scriptures?? In a similar way, you can compare it to the teachers whom you do trust. If you have another teacher you trust, then you can compare what the new teacher says to what the other one said.