Speeches That Echo Throughout History

Great Speeches & Great Public Speakers

By: Thomas Jerome Baker

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Why do some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously? This book answers that question in a practical way. How best to use the speeches in this book? There is no one “best” way to benefit from the material in this book. As a point of departure, read each speech. Read them silently and read them aloud. Then read them again. And again. Again... Appreciate the sounds of the words, for they are beautiful. Notice the use of repetition, humour, irony, wit, allusion and alliteration. Practice giving the speeches. Place yourself in the "shoes" of the speaker. You become Cato, Demosthenes, Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, Chief Joseph, Chief Red Jacket, Brutus, Mark Antony, William Pitt and William Wilberforce. See the world as they saw the world, and deliver the speeches... RHETORIC the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly, all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others. Ordinary people do this either at random or through practice and from acquired habit. Both ways being possible, the subject can plainly be handled systematically, for it is possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously; and every one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art.