Monday, January 02, 2006

Best Speeches of the Twentieth Century

Daddy's Roses has posted a beautiful reminder of the eloquent words of Martin Luther King today.
That post started my speculation about the great speeches of my time. In a comment on Daddy's Roses Isuggested that five speeches would have to be included in any list of great twentieth century speeches:
  • I Have a Dream by MLK
  • "Nothing to fear but fear itself" by FDR
  • "Day of Infamy" by FDR
  • "Blood, Sweat, Toil, & Tears" by Winston Churchill
  • The Inaugural Address by JFK
So I googled "Best Speeches" and "Twentieth Century" and found the following site. A group of speech and rhetoric experts were polled on the best American speeches of the twentieth century. Of course Churchill doesn't qualify, but the other four speeches are also the experts' top four. This site lists them and links to recordings of them.

What do you think? Is there someone you would add? Or remove? Here's the list.

By the way, one speech, that didn't make the list, actually saved the life of one of our presidents. Can anybody explain that?

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