The Greatest Speeches in History

Ask any actor, writer, singer or other artist and they'll tell you they owe their talent and success to a role model.  Public speaking is no different.  If you want to become an accomplished orator you should study the great ones.

This Monday is the day this year we honor the birth and legacy of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luthur King Jr.   His  passionate "I Have a Dream" speech is at the top of the list ranking 100 historic speeches at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html. 

Thanks to audio and video recordings, you can listen to and watch most of the speeches on this website as well as read the speech transcripts.  The collection includes other addresses by Dr. King, and the famous speeches of American presidents like Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, whose address the day the spaceshuttle Challenger exploded makes the list at #8.   His somber and avuncular reassurance to the nation and particularly to schoolchildren who may have seen the horror on live TV is a great example of how the right words and delivery create a powerful and memorable speech.  It's one of those times you remember where you were if you were old enough to remember.

If you want to jump to the notable parts of some famous speeches, there's another website with its own list of 35 with photos and the excerpts.  http://artofmanliness.com/2008/08/01/the-35-greatest-speeches-in-history/

My leap into public speaking was inspired not by a statesman but a comedian.  By ninth grade, I had pretty much worn out my parents's copy of the record album 'Inside Shelly Berman' (which won the Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Recording in 1960) and I recited the monologues at summer camp and elementary school talent shows.   So began a lifelong appreciation of comedy and the spoken word.  I admire the way the greats from Jack Benny, George Carlin and  Bill Cosby to Bill Maher, Brian Regan and Stephen Colbert use humor to express their views and hold audiences's attention.

Public speaking entertains and informs and is a vital part of American history.  For every important event there seems to be a great speech that created or commemorated it.  Even as our country was getting started, the founding fathers recognized how important the principle is when they wrote the Constitution and placed free speech near the top as part of the First Amendment.  Born from that guaranteed right, the historic speeches are here preserved forever.