Greatest Political Speeches in History

[Meclazine for Israel]

List your favourite political speech with a date and a video.

Let me set the benchmark with today's round up from Bob Katter talking about Crocodiles in Northern Queensland.

15 February 2021

Bob Katter

https://www.facebook.com/7NEWSCQ/videos/1134634523656961/

[Lincoln Republican]

Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address
November 19, 1863

William Jennings Bryan
Cross of Gold Speech
July 9, 1896

Theodore Roosevelt
The Leader and the Cause Speech
October 14, 1912

Franklin D Roosevelt
The Infamy Speech
December 8, 1941

[brucejoel99]

President Thomas Whitmore's Independence Day Speech, delivered on July 4th, 1996.

[YPestis25]

I have a soft spot for Cicero's Philippicae (44-43 B.C.E). And to the point of being the greatest, it is rare that a speech can be so powerful as to lead to your severed head and hands being displayed as warning.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's stretching the definition of "political speech" considerably, and may not have happened in this form in real life, but the version of Taira no Kiyomori's last words recorded in the Tale of the Heike is pretty badass:

Build no halls or pagodas after I die; dedicate no pious works. Dispatch the punitive force immediately, decapitate Yoritomo, and hang his head in front of my grave. That is all the dedication I require.

The Appeal of 18 June and the "finest hour" speech--delivered on the same day!--are also both pretty amazing, and the Gettysburg Address goes without saying.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Lloyd George's Limehouse speech is I think my favourite in UK political history

https://liberalhistory.org.uk/history/lloyd-george-on-the-peoples-budget/