The top 100 speeches of the 20th century

As research for the book I’m writing on public speaking, I’ve been listening to tons of famous speeches and various CDs of collected speeches. Recently I found a list of the top 100 speeches of all time and I’m working my way through it.

Interesting observations:

We have technology bias.Â Since we don’t have recordings of say, Jesus’ sermon on the mount, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, or Cicero at the Roman Senate, this top 100 is really the 100 recordings of speeches of all time. There are hundreds of years of great speeches that will never make this list, even if we extend it beyond the 20th century, simply because we’ve never heard them spoken.
There is a difference between a great written speech and a great performance. No living person heard Lincoln actually give the Gettysburg address.Â It’s debatable how good a speaker he was. Many of the speeches in this list are noteworthy for their content, but not for how they are presented (e.g. Faulkner’s nobel prize acceptance speech).
We have cultural bias.Â I have yet to find a proper international list of the speeches of all time. Most of the lists seem to be generated in the U.S. or google and other search engines I’ve tried simply have a strong U.S. bias.Â Hitler and Mussolini were both notable public speakers, but I doubt we’ll see them on any lists like these, even if they belong up there.
I think Malcolm X is the best speaker I’ve heard so far.Â I certainly don’t agree with all of his points, especially his more militant early work, but he succeeds at being natural, provocative, funny, intelligent and passionate in ways few on this list do (Try White Man’s Law as an early example and Any means necessary for later). Many of the speeches in this top 100 list are by politicians, and are unsurprisingly stiff and rehearsed sounding. Even JFK comes off this way in some of his most famous speeches.

Posted Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

in public speaking | 18 Comments » |

Scott - March 10, 2009 at 3:19 pm

Gordon: I agree. I think the fact that it’s a list created by the american rhetoric society gives them some license to focus on just the U.S., but it’s more worrysome that no one has compiled a world-wide list. Or even just speeches in English.

If it’s out there I haven’t found it yet.

Jeroen - March 10, 2009 at 3:19 pm

That list seems to be entirely American indeed. I’d expect an English language list would at least include Churchill…

BTW, do you think (y)our opinion on the quality of the speeches is also influenced by time? For example, Many films of the 1960s or 1970s are slow and sleep inducing today – except for a few really good ones. I guess many speeches may meet the same fate.

Scott - March 10, 2009 at 3:22 pm

Jeroen: Absolutely. Style, speed and tone are all reflections of pop-culture of the day, and many of FDR’s speeches sound very old, and impossible to deliver the same way today. He spoke in a time before television. I think a clear demarcation in speaking style can be found in pre-TV and post-TV.

I don’t think the internet has yet had much of an effect on speech in this way. But we’ll see.

This is part of why written speeches live on in a way the performed versions do not – the style effects are easier to compensate for in written speech. You can skim or make easier style allowances.

Speaking of speeches « The Essential Communicator - March 10, 2009 at 10:08 pm

[...] a lighter note, Scott Berkun draws attention to a web site dedicated to the “Top 100 Speeches of All Time“. He [...]

Sean Crawford - March 10, 2009 at 11:02 pm

Carlin’s “saving the planet” was inspired by Jurrasic Park, especially (I think) that long death bed monologue of the mathematician. This I know because Carlin checked with Michael Crichton, and then Crichton put Carlin’s skit on his home page.

Mark Gould - March 11, 2009 at 5:24 am

Scott — there is a slightly less US-centric set of great speeches compiled by the Guardian newspaper in the UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/series/greatspeeches

Michael Eidenmuller - March 11, 2009 at 2:08 pm

A Call to Accuracy: It is NOT a list of the top 100 speeches of all time. It IS a list of the Top 100 *American* *Political* Speeches of the *20th century.*

These data are the subject of explicit identification at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/newtop100speeches.htm

M.E.

Steven Levy - March 11, 2009 at 2:09 pm

A lot of these speeches were delivered to a large crowd. The speakers knew they suffered from acoustic issues and paced themselves accordingly. (Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man” speech, with the interminable echo at Yankee Stadium, is the poster child for these.) Reagan was one of the first who recognized that modern technology allowed you to be intimate with the audience — and even his key public-place speeches were really aimed at the audience watching on TV.

It’s interesting that black preachers often found a rhythm that worked well — Malcolm X, Dr. King. Perhaps an audience of a few hundred is the right size to build on interaction with the audience without dealing with a need to project an image to a stadium — or the Mall in DC.

I’ve talked with a number of folks perhaps ten years older than I who were present for Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream.” Comments from someone on the lawn suggested Dr. King was both flat and hard to hear. Comments from people on or near the podium also noted Dr. King was having timing troubles, and indeed the first two-thirds of the speech are preamble to the few minutes we remember. You can hear him pausing for response a few times and not getting much beyond some mild encouragement from others on the podium.

There were hundreds of thousands of people on the Mall that day, but I think the reason the speech works so well for us — and not so good for those who were there — was that it is pitched just as if he had a congregation in front of him crowded into a church or meeting hall. There’s no over-enunciation; his rhythm assumes there’s no echo to contend with; and he’s not shouting other than the preacher-loud climax.

BTW, I think the posts about both Churchill and Carlin make very good points. It’s obvious the list is US-centric; it is what it is. However, the omission of others who “give speeches” is jarring. Carlin most certainly gave speeches; his setpieces were lengthy, had a consistent theme, had a core or spine to which he’d keep returning, had a point to make, and so on. I’d also add the great storytellers; Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen, for example, may spend ten minutes on a topic between songs that is just as focused as a political speech. (The Record Live 1975-1985 captures a number of Springsteen’s “speeches”/stories.)

Michael Eidenmuller - March 11, 2009 at 10:48 pm

Scott: We’re good. Certainly, an attempt to expand the scope of a ‘great speeches… list’ could be worthwhile, perhaps even heroic, and most probably intractably unsatisfying.

best – Michael

Sean Crawford - March 12, 2009 at 4:11 pm

On my 2008 fall vacation at a Chapters bookstore I was pleased to find a boxed set of a book of “Speeches That Changed the World” (transcripts and biographys) and a CD. This from London by Quercus publishing (2007) with an introduction by Simon Sebag Montefiore. The CD really made my road trip. It was all English but not just U.S. citizens, and not just politics. The CD went back as far as Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” speech.

I was amused to find -so much has it been quoted- that I had heard (read) every word of JFK’s inaugural before, just not all in one place!

The (abridged?) speeches, Scott will be pleased to know, do indeed include Hitler, Stalin and Hirohito but, alas, not Mussolini. Of course Malcolm is included.

Scott Berkun - April 21, 2009 at 10:22 am

I think who makes this list has a great deal to do with their other accomplishments. Do we really think these people gave the greatest “speeches” or all time? Not exactly. They gave the greatest speeches among a tiny number of very influential people whose speeches matter and are heard by hundreds of thousands of people.

That said, I think Obama is a very good public speaker. He’s not one of my favorites but he is certainly very good.