Lessons From Legendary Speakers

Simply put: Great speeches come across as passionate and authoritative voices of the truth; they never read like excerpts from the World Almanac. If they did, nobody would listen.  

In achieving that authority, legendary speakers utilize a wide range of both rhetorical and oratorical traits.

Winston Churchill

He spent weeks crafting them with a rhetorical precision that is virtually extinct today. His favorite tactic, which he relied on again and again, was to appeal to history. He contextualized his most important points and ideas with allusions or direct references to the past and to the future, giving his message an intoxicating and inspirational timelessness.  

Lesson: Position your goals within a grand context

He drew listeners in and won them over with a homely, personable style of delivery that felt conversational but paternal, informal but authoritative, and always vigilant in its aims.

Lesson: Be affable, but have a backbone