speech on Speeches

Churchill’s extraordinary powers of oratory became legendary; his broadcasts to the nation and speeches in the House of Commons during World War II are still widely celebrated. Yet, not everyone was c...

Franklin D. Roosevelt had hoped the Yalta conference (which discussed the future of Europe and Germany post-WWII) wouldn’t last more than five or six days. Winston Churchill, however, remarked, “I do ...

A great speech is literature.

In 1963, the politician, ambassador, and one-time presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson addressed the students of Princeton University with a touch of humor. “I understand I am here to speak, and ...

Be sincere, Be brief, Be seated.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

As a youngster I developed a thoroughly annoying and humiliating problem of stuttering…In the ninth grade, I was elected president of our junior high student body. During an assembly of the seventh, e...

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

The great pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards wrote up a series of resolutions regaring his personal life and behavior. These resolutions relate to the tongue: 31. Resolved, Never to say anything...

What you do speaks so loud, that I cannot hear what you say.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

In the last class I taught at Regent, an obviously irritated young woman came up to me and said, “Dr. Peterson, three times during your lecture you did not say anything for twenty seconds. I know beca...

Fair speech may hide a foul heart.

Immaturity talks when it should listen, and is silent when it should speak.

Nick believed his purpose was to speak to audiences, to become a motivational speaker, yet he had no experience, no resources, and no invitations. He decided to begin calling schools and offering to s...

We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

It remains wonderful that mere puffs of wind should allow men to discover what they think and feel, to share their attitudes and plans, to anticipate the future and learn from the past, and to create ...

Pastor: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and i...

Steve Sample has been described as the greatest university president of his generation. For nineteen years, by his capable leadership, Sample led the University of Southern California to new heights o...

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...

It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stra...

Our claim is that God has revealed Himself by speaking; that this divine (or God-breathed) speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture; and that Scripture is, in fact, God’s Word written, ...

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

The Dangers of Our Words No matter how much we might wish it weren’t the case, the perception others have of us is directly connected to the words (and actions) we use throughout our lives. Most of u...

Convicting God, your word tells us that the tongue is a fire, and we admit that it’s true. We say things that we should not say: words that tear down instead of building up; phrases that divide rather...

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.