Ask Lemmy

There's a Wikipedia article about the proverb.

Speech is silver, silence is golden

Beyond what it says in the article, silence is a popular tactic in negotiations to this day. If you're negotiating a price, it's more difficult for the party who mentions a price first. Also, the need to speak during silence often puts the speaker at a disadvantage in negotiations.

I don't think it means that silence will necessarily benefit you materially -- rather that silence is something precious or valuable. Maybe consider the proverb's relation to these similar ones:

Still waters run deep.

Better to close one's mouth and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and prove it.

The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.

The prudent keep their knowledge to themselves, but a fool's heart blurts out folly.

A wise old owl sat in an oak:
The more he heard, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard;
Why aren't we all like that wise old bird?

You may enjoy listening to his episode of freakonomics: Please Get Your Noise Out of My Ears

Some people will spend a lot of money to have the benefit of some control over their ambience. Home location choices. Choice to have a personal vehicle vs. public transportation. Purchasing expensive noise cancelling headphones...

For me personally, silence means you're listening, taking time to actually respond instead of actually just blurting out what pops into your mind.

Another example of where silence might prove useful would be negotiations, where over sharing or talking too freely could translate to a disadvantage.