I second this
Howard Beale’s call to action from Network.
The Twelfth Doctor’s speech from “The Zygon Inversion.” Still gives me chills (and it seems even more apropos now than it did then);
Does a speech that was never given count? Mary Schmich in the Chicago Tribune wrote a speech she would like to give to a graduating class if ever invited to do so. The Internet loved it so much in was misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut:
Sure. Cicero wrote philippics in pamphlet form but they were not always actually delivered. And he basically perfected the analysis of speechmaking.
Kevin Costner, as “Crash” Davis, talking about what he believes in, from Bull Durham:
That’s actually made up of various bits-and-pieces of various Patton speeches, strung together in a “greatest hits” kind of way.
On Shakespeare, I like Exeter’s reply to King Charles’ “Oh yeah?” Then his smack-talk to the Dauphin. Of course, Brian Blessed totally sells it, as he does most things.
The one Mr. Burns (The Simpsons) gives to the company softball team:
All right, you ragtag bunch of misfits. You hate me, and I hate you even more. But without my beloved ringers you’re all I’ve got. So I want you to remember some inspiring things that someone else may have told you in the course of your lives and go out there and win!
And I’m not just saying that as a joke. I’m serious. It has so much going for it: humor, brevity, a nostalgic appeal for genXers and first wave millennials. I have actually quoted it in real life circumstances where some kind of motivational speech was called for.
So many Captain Jean-Luc Picard speeches.
One from “Yesterday’s Enterprise”:
And two from “The Drumhead”:
This speech from Cyrano de Bergerac – not an oration, but a speech, in effect, to the audience. It always takes my breath away.
Then there’s this one from The Man for All Seasons. A very short speech, less than a minute, with an audience of three. Watch the whole clip, but the speech starts at 2:38 and ends at 3:01.
It’s half of a debate, not a standalone speech, but Baldwin’s part of the Baldwin/Buckley debate at Cambridge:
It comes as a great shock around the age of five, or six, or seven, to discover that the country to which you have pledged allegiance along with everyone else has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians—when you were rooting for Gary Cooper—the Indians were you. It comes as a great shock to discover the country which is your birth place and to which you owe your life and your identity has not in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you. The disaffection, the demoralization, and the gap between one person and another only on the basis of the color of their skin begins there, and accelerates through a whole lifetime . . . by the time you are 30, you have been through a certain kind of mill, and the most serious effect of the mill you’ve been through is again, not the catalogue of disaster: the policeman, the taxi drivers, the waiters, the landlady, the landlords, the banks, the insurance companies, the millions of details, 24 hours of every day, which spell out to you that you are a worthless human being.
I am speaking very seriously, and this is not an overstatement: I picked cotton, I carried it to the market, I built the railroads under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing
And Nelson Madela’s Rivonia Trial speech:
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
There was a wonderful speech that Jimmy Carter did while campaigning for Governor and quoted in full by Hunter S. Thompson in his book “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72”. I think it was the finest political speech I heard. I tried once to find a transcript of it and didn’t, but maybe it’s time to try again.
I also loved the “I Have a Dream” speech referenced by Left Hand of Dorkness. One thing I love about it is how King delivered it. He had an 18 page manuscript he was speaking from, and he set it aside and delivered the speech off the top of his head (though he had spoken on the themes before). I think of him as the ultimate skilled extrovert, who was able to connect with a quarter of a million people simultaneously in real time. That, and his open letter to eight clergy written from Birmingham while jailed, are two enormous milestones in my own understanding of what genius is.
Here you go:
He wasn’t actually campaigning for governor - he was the sitting governor at the time, and term limited from running again. And it was before he announced he was running for President in 1976.
“Ask what you can do for your country” is laudable on its face. It’s not reality.
Muslims face Mecca when they want to pray. Americans face Washington when they want a handout. That applies to individuals and state/municipal politicians alike.
Modnote: This is off-topic and pretty much too political for such a thread. Please don’t do this again.
Ursula K LeGuin could really write. No Spoilers, The Stars Below is about a post nuclear future in which the church is ascendant and has branded scientific knowledge or practice heresy. An astronomer (who notably viewed his work as seeing and chronicling the glory of G-d’s creation) is driven into exile in a mine. He gives this speech
"The astronomer answered him with growing assurance. “By virtue of certain properties of light and lenses. The eye is a delicate instrument, but it is blind to half the universe—far more than half. The night sky is black, we say: between the stars is void and darkness. But turn the telescope-eye on that space between the stars, and lo, the stars! Stars too faint and far for the eye alone to see, rank behind rank, glory beyond glory, out to the uttermost boundaries of the universe. Beyond all imagination, in the outer darkness, there is light: a great glory of sunlight. I have seen it. I have seen it, night after night, and mapped the stars, the beacons of God on the shores of darkness. And here too there is light! There is no place bereft of the light, the comfort and radiance of the creator spirit. There is no place that is outcast, outlawed, forsaken. There is no place left dark. Where the eyes of God have seen, there light is. We must go farther, we must look farther! There is light if we will see it. Not with eyes alone, but with the skill of the hands and the knowledge of the mind and the heart’s faith is the unseen revealed, and the hidden made plain. And all the dark earth shines like a sleeping star.”
That combination of science and faith really touches me- and as I said, LeGuinn could really write.