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

Gehenna, or dead. Some of the speeches herein were chosen because they are representative of an era or a style, or instructive to modern orators: Malcolm X’s incendiary words are not “great” in the sense of being timeless or majestic, but they contain a persuasive passion.
    On the other hand, not every great speech is a good speech. What Harry Truman’s stump speech lacks in depth and shape, it makes up for in zest. What Jonathan Edwards’s sermon lacks in grace, it delivers in hellfire. In this anthology, the ultimate criterion in what makes a speech great is whether I think it’s great. Do not be shocked by that subjectivism: oratory is an art, not a science, and a great rhetorician may choose to grab, slug, inspire, provoke, or tickle. Whatever tone the orator chooses, if he wants to make a memorable speech, he should make a phrase.
    Phrasemaking is easy. Suppose you want to enliven a speech about the division of a continent. Think of a metaphor about division; how about the asbestos sheet that is lowered onto the stage to separate the audience from fire backstage? It’s called an iron curtain. Go ahead, the metaphor may be trite, but give it a shot. And you can use it derivatively: if you’re writing about China, boost the analogy to a bamboo curtain, or, in a rousing speech to an underwear convention, a lace curtain. If you’re unwilling to let a simile be your umbrella, there’s always alliteration: “not nostrums but normalcy” (a catchier word, by the way, than “normality”) or the “nattering nabobs of negativism.” If you’re really stuck, put “new” in front of any grand noun, and capitalize the phrase: it worked with “nationalism,” “freedom,” “deal” “frontier,” and “world order,” and it can work for you.
    To the mix of welcome, structure, pulse, forum, focus, phrase, and purpose, add this single most important ingredient: theme. In the end, you must answer in a word or sentence the question of the person who couldn’t be there: What was the speech about? Churchill, in the radio talk that coined a phrase that was transmuted into “blood, sweat, and tears,” made a speech about sacrifice. He was the one who faced a sloppy dessert and said, “Take away this pudding: it has no theme,” The speech you are reading now is about how to judge a great speech. I have thattheme clear in my mind; if you do not discern that as my theme, this is not much of a speech.
    Delivered by Demosthenes, however, even this modest effort would seem like a great speech. In a story perhaps apocryphal, his countryman Pericles, who also had a reputation as an orator, made this admiring comparison: “When Pericles speaks, the people say, ‘How well he speaks.’ But when Demosthenes speaks, the people say, ‘Let us march!’” Ronald Reagan’s delivery could lift a bad speech up by the scruff of its neck, shake it, and make it sing. Contrariwise, the best-written speech can fall on its face if poorly delivered. There is the old chestnut about the Texan striding along Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan who asked a stranger, “Tell me, partner, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” and the stranger replied, “Practice, practice.” Delivery is the final step to eloquence; it requires practice, discipline, drill, and you can be your own personal trainer. You develop the self-confidence that puts an audience at ease, or sits them up; your eye is in contact with the people, not the page; your joy in your job is contagious.
    Woodrow Wilson was originally a political-science professor, and his lecture delivery matched his stilted writing. But Wilson labored to overcome the professorial style. His earliest writing was about orators and their oratory. He founded the debating society at Princeton and added debate coaching to his teaching; he declaimed in the woods; he set out to defeat his natural inclinations to aloofness and reserve. Ultimately, as he got better at it, the future president gained