Quotes and speeches of the month
Logos Pathos Ethos, December 2018
Dear speech-fans and -friends,
Depth and gravity marked the speeches delivered this past month as Europe commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the end of the first world war, the eightieth anniversary of the Kristallnacht, or looked ahead to global challenges, with the Katowice COP 24 just starting,
These speeches typically call for good lines, as you can see below in our monthly selection of what good rhetoric is.
On a lighter tone but as relevant, the latest book in the Bibliography section provides useful insights on what audiences can get – or not – from the use of numbers and statistics in speeches.
Best wishes,
Great speeches,
Isabelle
I want to say this with all the force I have in me today,
because the coming night we will be thinking about the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht in Germany.
And this is for me the ultimate symbol that if you just put enough effort into it, as Hitler and Goebbels did, in a couple of years' time, even in a sophisticated society, you can manipulate people's anxieties and fear and instrumentalize it to such a degree that you can dehumanise part of your population, especially if you can say that they are different. This is what happened in Germany between 1933 and 1938.
The power of the ‘Why’ question
Eighty years since the pogrom night – why, ladies and gentlemen, am I talking to you about this today?
... and the speech comes full circle
This is why we commemorate today (…). That is the message and the essence of our acts of commemoration today.
The power of the ‘Why’ question … and who raises this question
(English below)
Il y a 10 ans, en 2008, mourrait à l’âge de 110 ans le dernier combattant français connu de la Grande Guerre, M. Lazare Ponticelli. Chaque 11 novembre, M. Ponticelli, immigré italien, honorait la promesse faite à ses camarades tombés trop jeunes au combat. Il se rendait au monument aux morts pour penser à eux.
A la toute fin de sa vie, il avait finalement accepté de témoigner dans les écoles. Et son témoignage commençait ainsi - et je cite: « D’abord, je n’ai jamais su pourquoi on se battait… ».
(In English)
Ten years ago, in 2008, Mr. Lazare Ponticelli, the last known French veteran of the Great War, died at the age of 110. Every year on 11 November, Mr. Ponticelli, an Italian immigrant, honoured the promise he had made to his comrades who had died too young on the battlefield. He used to visit his local war memorial to remember them. Right at the end of his life, he had finally agreed to talk to schoolchildren about his experience. He always began with these words: “First of all, I never knew why we were fighting …”
Read the full speech here: António Guterres, Address to the Paris peace forum, 11 November 2018
How to own the room - Women and the art of brilliant speaking
Pay attention to the first two words of the title: “how to”: they imply that there is a way, that you can learn. And indeed, the idea that we – women, but “they don’t have the monopoly of insecurity”, so actually everybody, really – can learn “how to be powerful in (our) speaking is at the heart of this book.
Viv Groskop invites u[...]
Read more
Quotation of the day
« When it comes to cyber-attacks, you could say my experience is somehow special. Estonia is a small Baltic nation on the edge of Europe. We not only share a border with Russia, we also have a long and difficult history together. In 2007, I was Prime Minister of Estonia. Over three weeks, my country was the target of an orchestrated cyber-campaign ... »Andrus Ansip
Conversation
Excellent speech from Angela Merkel (consec interpretation included :-). Emotional, courageous and ambitious. C[...]
Posted by Jose Iturri | Join the conversation