Great Speeches - Full Transcripts of My Favorite Inspiring Talks

I gave my first speech in May, 2010.

It was at my hometown public library and half a dozen people came out. I just kind of stood there and rambled. There were a lot of awkward silences. One guy clapped.

Since then I’ve given over 500 keynote speeches. I am still getting better. I have a long way to go. One thing I’ve always done is collect speech transcripts and bits of poetry. I study them — inhale them — to see greatness in action. How do they build connection? How do they structure their messages? What’s the science? What’s the art?

This is a page of my favorite speech transcripts and poetry:

“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness” by George Saunders

Mississippi Testimony by Brandon Boulware

“What, to the slave, is the fourth of July?” by Frederick Douglass

Post-Game Speech on Jacob Blake and Culture of Fear by Coach Doc Rivers

“The Other America” by Dr Martin Luther King Jr

“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Martin Luther King Jr

Think Like a Bronze Medalist, not Silver by Derek Sivers

On Children by Khalil Gibran

“68 bits of unsolicited advice” by Kevin Kelly

Television by Roald Dahl

I believe in superheroes by IN-Q

“Why did I say “yes” to speak here” by Malcolm Gladwell

2020 Screen Actors Guild Acceptance Speech by Brad Pitt

“What does why mean” by Richard Feynman

“Invent your own life’s meaning” by Bill Watterson

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

Press conference answer on ‘long snapping’ by Bill Belichick

If— by Rudyard Kipling

“We don’t move on from grief. We move forward with it” by Nora McInerny

To Laugh Much and Often by Bessie Anderson Stanley

Blessing for the New Year by Kayleen Asbo

Nobel Acceptance Speech by John Steinbeck

You Learn by Anonymous

“On the soul-sustaining necessity of resisting self-comparison and fighting cynicism” by Maria Popova

Maximus, to himself by Charles Olson

New Day’s Lyric by Amanda Gorman

By the Well of Living and Seeing, Part II, Section 28: During the Second World War by Charles Reznikoff

Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire

Quotes On Reading by Marcel Proust

Two powerful songs about fatherhood by Harry Chapin & John Lennon

Sauntering by Christopher Morley

There is no Frigate Like a Book by Emily Dickinson

Dreamland by Mark Twain

“You Are Brilliant and the Earth is Hiring” by Paul Hawken

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade by Brad Modlin

The Sun by Mary Oliver

Dust If You Must by Rose Milligan

Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

Do not ask your children to strive by William Martin

The Mind of Absolute Trust by Seng-ts’an

Watching the Wheels by John Lennon

Sparrow Envy by J. Drew Lanham

‘A better measure for society’ by Robert F. Kennedy

Leisure by W.H. Davies

"The right to the future tense" by Shoshana Zuboff