The practice of silence is one of my favourite ideals and I have written and spoken about the same whenever I could. But silence in relation to the conquest of the ego has a different focus altogether. Ego pushes people to talk too much, to talk constantly about themselves and to dominate conversations by pushing their views and opinions on others. Asking such people to observe silence is almost a kin to strangulating them! They would feel deprived, they would demand the right to be heard and insist that their voices and opinions are worth being heard. Some of them may be right, some of the time. Rightly or wrongly, excessive egoism is associated with excessive talking- the sort of talking that does not allow others to get a word in edgewise, the sort of talking that drowns out other voices, the sort of talking that dismisses other's view with a Contemptuous "Nonsense!" or "What rubbish!" Or even without any of these insulting comments, just raising the voice and talking incessantantly. Before we get into the merits and demerits of loud talking(I have a few friends who claim that they do not deliberately talk loudly; it is just that their voices are a little on the high-decibel side).