Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History Read Online Free

criteria in selecting the speeches herein is shapeliness. Most people associate shapeliness with the female form or masculine physique, but those of us in the rhetorics dodge—students or practitioners of persuasion—think of shapeliness as necessary forensic form, the configuring contours of communication.
    That’s because a great speech—even a good speech—must have a structure, some thematic anatomy. “Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em; then tell ’em; then tell ’em what you told ’em.” That simple organizing principle is the primary adage of speechmaking. That old saying, you note, is packaged in perfect oratorical style; the imperative mood, the force of a command, the parallel structure that invites a rhythm in delivery. None of that pompous “The well-crafted speech should begin with an introductory survey of content to come and conclude with a summary of main points.” At meetings of the Judson Welliver Society, the association of former White House speechwriters, you can hear a low buzz in the room between after-dinner toasts. It is the distinguished membership murmuring the mantra, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them; then tell them; then tell them what you told them.” We know whereof we speak. Take it from the fast-shuffling old pros: graceful organization—shapeliness—is the second step to a great speech.
    (Wait a minute; what was the first step? That was “Shake hands with your audience.” I did that with the Bob Strauss line. Make the first step a quickstep; get your smile, then get to work.)
    A skeleton needs life. Beyond structure is pulse. A good speech has a beat, a changing rhythm, a sense of movement that gets the audience tapping its mind’s foot. (If the mind can have an eye, it can have a foot; every metaphor can be extended.) If there is one technique that orators down the ages have agreed to use, it’s anaphora, the repeated beginning. Here’s Demosthenes: “When they brought… suits against me—when they menaced—when they promised—when they set these miscreants like wild beasts upon me….” Here’s Jesus: “Blessed are the poor in spirit…. Blessed are the meek…. Blessed are the peacemakers….” Here’s JFK: “Let both sides explore…. Let both sides seek…. Let both sides unite….” Don’t knock this obvious parallelism: It sings. It excites. It works.
    What else makes a great speech? Occasion. There comes a dramatic moment in the life of a person or a party or a nation that cries out for the uplift and release of a speech. Someone is called upon to articulate the hope, pride, or grief of all. The speaker becomes the cynosure, the brilliant object of guidance; he or she is all alone out there on the cusp, and the world stops to look and listen. That instant access to fame gives the edge to an inaugural address, or to a speech on some state occasion or award ceremony; the occasion, by being invested with solemnity or importance, boosts the speech itself. Some great occasions are frittered away with pedestrian addresses, as in Jimmy Carter’s inaugural or in Nelson Mandela’s speech thanking the dais upon his release from a lifetime ordeal in a South African prison; neither is included here. But other memorable occasions are made immortal by the words said at them: Lincoln’s poem at Gettysburg is worth close analysis, not simply recitation by rote; and Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream today” is worth rereading in its entirety, and not just taken in sound bites on anniversaries.
    An idea closely related to occasion is “forum,” from the Roman place of speechifying. When I was writing speeches in the White House, I had a perfect forum: the Oval Office, which is now a permanent television set. Using this setting, a president must explain rather than declaim; the technique of televised speechmaking is to speak to an audience of one. That calls for a conversational tone, even though the conversation is a monologue, and a