Back in 2008, on their website
“The Art of Manliness,” Brett and Kate McCay wrote beautifully about oratory:
“Oratory has been called the
highest art for it encompasses all other disciplines. It requires a knowledge
of literature, the ability to construct prose, and an ear for rhythm, harmony
and musicality. Oratory is not mere speaking, but speech that appeals to our
noblest sentiments, animates our souls, stirs passions and emotions, and
inspires virtuous action. It is often at its finest when fostered during times
of tragedy, pain, crisis, fear, and turmoil. In these situations it serves as a
light, a guide to those who cannot themselves make sense of the chaos and look
to a leader to point the way.”
The McCays then took it upon
themselves to select the 35 greatest examples of oratory in history—based on
style, substance, and impact. So of all the addresses and lectures and sermons,
of all the orations and exhortations and proclamations, of all the statements
of possibility and perseverance, among a cast of historical icons that might
include Patton and Napoleon and Vince Lombardi and Billy Graham and William
Jennings Bryan and Malcolm X, these were deemed the 35 finest speeches.
It’s a fine list—maybe a little heavy
on Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt, and the inclusion of Jesus Christ had
some folks scratching their heads. And since it was posted on “The Art of
Manliness,” it is a male-only collection. Still, it is an impressive array of
oratory. Given the time, we should all read each one of them in full. But in
this installment of the Why Not 100, we offer excerpts—we rank the 35 best
parts of the best speeches in human history:
1. Martin Luther, King, Jr.
“I Have a Dream”
August 28, 1963—Washington, D.C.
“I have a dream that one day every
valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the
rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight,
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it
together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone
of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of
our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be
able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail
together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one
day. This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will
be able to sing with new meaning, ‘My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of
liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s
pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
2. Winston
Churchill
“We Shall Fight on the Beaches”
June 4, 1940—House of Commons, London
“We
shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas
and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the
air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on
the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the
fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never
surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a
large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas,
armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in
God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to
the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
3. Frederick Douglass
“What to the Slave is the Fourth
of July?”
July 5, 1852—Rochester, New York
“I am not included within the
pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the
immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice
are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty,
prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not
me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and
death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must
mourn.”
4. Abraham Lincoln
“The Gettysburg Address”
November 19, 1863—Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania
“The world will little note, nor
long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It
is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather of us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have
died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish
from the earth.”
5. Patrick
Henry
“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!”
March 23, 1775—Richmond, Virginia
“The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the
clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we
here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so
dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
Forbid it, Almighty God! I know now what course others may take; but as for me,
give me library, or give me death!”
6. John F. Kennedy
“Inauguration Address”
January
20, 1961—Washington, D.C.
“In the long history of the
world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom
in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome
it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people
or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to
this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from
that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what
your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow
citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together
we can do for the freedom of man.”
7. Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic”
April 23, 1910—Paris, France
“It is not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of
deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually
in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives
valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is not
effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the
deeds; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions; who spends himself in a
worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that
his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know
victory nor defeat.”
8. William Faulkner
“Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech”
December 10, 1950—Stockholm,
Sweden
“I believe that man will not
merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among
creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit
capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s,
duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by
lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride
and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.
The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the
props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”
9. Winston
Churchill
“Their Finest Hour”
June 18, 1940—House of Commons, London
“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the
war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the
world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the
whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and
cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and
perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore
brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire
and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, ‘This was their
finest hour.’”
10. Abraham Lincoln
“Second Inaugural Address”
March 4, 1865—Washington, D.C.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we
are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne
the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
11. Charles de Gaulle
“The Appeal of 18 June”
June
18, 1940, London
“The war is not limited to the
unfortunate territory of our country. This war is not over as a result of the
Battle of France. All the mistakes, all the delays, all the suffering, do not
alter the fact that there are, in the world, all the means necessary to crush
our enemies one day. Vanquished today by mechanical force, in the future we
will be able to overcome by a superior mechanical force. The fate of the world
depends on it.”
12. Franklin
Delano Roosevelt
“First Inaugural Address”
March
4, 1933—Washington, D.C.
“This great nation will endure as
it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert
my firm believe that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless,
unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert
retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of
frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people
themselves, which is essential to victory.”
13. Winston Churchill
“Blood, Sweat, and Tears”
May 13, 1940—House of Commons,
London
“I have nothing to offer but
blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous
kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. You ask,
what is your policy? I say it is to wage war by land, se, and air. War with all
our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a
monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human
crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word.
It is victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however
long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.”
14. Pericles
“Funeral Oration”
431 B.C.—Athens
“You must yourselves realize the
power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her
fills your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, you
must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honor
in action that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure
in an enterprise could make them consent
to deprive their country of their valor, but they laid it at her feet as the
most glorious contribution that they could offer.”
15. Ronald
Reagan
“Address to the Nation on the Challenger”
January 28, 1986—Washington, D.C.
“I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this
happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all
part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong
to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling
us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.”
16. Socrates
“Apology”
399 B.C.—Athens
“Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and
then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I
have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell
you that to do as you say would be disobedience to the God, and therefore that
I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say
again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other things about
which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest good of man, and
that the unexamined life is not worth living, you are still less likely to
believe me.”
17. John F. Kennedy
“The Decision to Go to the Moon”
May 25, 1961—Houston, Texas
“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as
yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all
mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But
why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why
climb the highest mountain?”
18. General Douglas MacArthur
“Duty, Honor, Country”
May 12, 1962—West Point, New York
“You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our
national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold
the nation’s destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long
Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive
drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses
thundering those magic words: Duty,
Honor, Country.”
19. Theodore Roosevelt
“The Man with the Muck-Rake”
April
14, 1906—Washington, D.C.
“To assail the great and admitted
evils of our political and industrial life with such crude and sweeping
generalizations as to include decent men in the general condemnation means the
searing of the public conscience. There results a general attitude either of
cynical belief in and indifference to public corruption or else of a
distrustful inability to discriminate between the good and the bad. Either
attitude is fraught with untold damage to the country as a whole.”
20. Ronald
Reagan
“40th Anniversary of D-Day”
June 6, 1984—Pointe du Hoc, France
“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith
that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy
on the beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge—and pray God we have
not lost it—that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force
for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate,
not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you
were right not to doubt.”
21. Mahatma Gandhi
“Quit India”
August 8, 1942—India
“In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by
non-violence, there will be equal freedom for all. Everybody will be his own
master. It is to join a struggle for such democracy that I invite you today.
Once you realize this you will forget the differences between the Hindus and
Muslims, and think of yourselves as Indians only, engaged in the common
struggle for independence.”
22. Theodore Roosevelt
“Duties of American Citizenship”
January 26, 1883—Buffalo, New York
“No man has a right to shirk his political duties under whatever plea of
pleasure or business; and while such shirking may be pardoned in those of small
means it is entirely unpardonable in those among whom it is most common—in the
people whose circumstances give them freedom in the struggle for life. In so
far as the community grows to think it rightly, it will likewise grow to regard
the young man of means who shirks his duty to the State in time of peace as
being only one degree worse than the man who thus shirks it in time of war.”
23. Dwight Eisenhower
“Farewell Address”
January 17, 1961—Washington, D.C.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic process. We should take nothing for granted. Only an
alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge
industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and
goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
24. William Wilberforce
“Abolition Speech”
May 12, 1789—House of Commons, London
“However averse any gentleman may now be, yet we shall all be of one
opinion in the end. When I turn myself to these thoughts, I take courage—I
determine to forget all my other fears, and I march forward with a firmer step
in the full assurance that my cause will bear me out, and that I shall be able
to justify upon the clearest principles, every resolution in my hand, the
avowed end of which is the total abolition of the slave trade.”
25. Marcus Tullius Cicero
“The First Oration Against Catiline”
63 B.C.—Rome
“I will put you to death, then, when there shall be not one person
possible to be found so wicked, so abandoned, so like yourself, as not to allow
that it has been rightly done. As long as one person exists who can dare to
defend you, you shall live; but you shall live as you do now, surrounded by my
many and trusty guards, so that you shall not be able to stir one finger
against the republic; many eyes and ears shall still observe and watch you, as
they have hitherto done, tho you shall not perceive them.”
26. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation”
December 8, 1941—Washington, D.C.
“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated
invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to
absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of
the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the
uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall
never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact
that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With
confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our
people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.”
27. General Douglas MacArthur
“Farwell Address to Congress”
April 19, 1951—Washington, D.C.
“I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the Army,
even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish
hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on
the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but
I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that
day which proclaimed most proudly that ‘old soldiers never die; they just fade
away.’”
28. Jesus Christ
“The Sermon on the Mount”
33 A.D.—Jerusalem
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek:
for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for
they shall obtain mercy.”
29. Chief Joseph
“Surrender Speech”
October 5, 1877—Montana Territory
“It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to
death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no
blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I
want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find.
Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my
heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more
forever. “
30. Demosthenes
“The Third Phillipic”
342 B.C.—Athens
“It is folly, and it is cowardice, to cherish hopes like these, to give
way to evil counsels, to refuse to do anything that you should do, to listen to
the advocates of the enemy’s cause, and to fancy that you dwell in so great a
city that, whatever happens, you will not suffer any harm.”
31. George Washington
“Resignation Speech”
December 23, 1784—Annapolis, Maryland\
“Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great
theater of action; and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body
under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take
my leave of all the employments of public life.”
32. Theodore Roosevelt
“Strength and Decency”
August 16, 1903—Oyster Bay, New York
“I desire to see in this country the decent men strong and the strong men
decent, and until we get that combination in pretty good shape we are not going
to be by any means as successful as we should be. There is always a tendency
among very young men and among boys who are not quite young men as yet to think
that to be wicked is rather smart; to think it shows that they are men. Oh, how
often you see some young fellow who boasts that he is going to ‘see life,”
meaning by that that he is going to see that part of life which it is a
thousandfold better should remain unseen!”
33. Ronald Reagan
“Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate”
June 12, 1987—Berlin
“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security
go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of
world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable,
that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General
Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet
Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate,
Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
34. Alexander the Great
“Speech of Alexander the Great”
326 B.C.—Hydaspes River, India
“You and I, gentlemen, have shared the labor and shared the danger, and
the rewards are for us all. The conquered territory belongs to you; from your
ranks the governors of it are chosen; already the greater part of its treasure
passes into your hands, and when all Asia is overrun, then indeed I will go
further than the mere satisfaction of our ambitions: the utmost hopes of riches
or power which each one of you cherishes will be far surpassed, and whoever
wishes to return home will be allowed to go, either with me or without me. I
will make those who stay the envy of those who return.”
35. Lou Gehrig
“Farewell to Baseball Address”
July 4, 1939—Yankee Stadium, The Bronx
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I
got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
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