How Well Do You Know These Famous Speeches?

Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan was elected in 1972, becoming the first Southern Black woman elected to the House of Representatives. A civil rights champion, she gained national fame for a powerful speech she gave during the Watergate congressional hearings in 1974, and two years later delivered the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York City.

When college basketball coach Jim Valvano accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award at the very first ESPYs in 1993, he was suffering from cancer. In his speech, he outlined three things you should do every single day: laugh, cry, and think. His other famous declaration has now become the motto for the Jimmy V Foundation: “Don’t give up… don’t ever give up.”

Muhammad Ali never attended college himself, but in 1975 he delivered a memorable commencement speech at Harvard University. The boxing champ talked about the importance and power of friendship above all else. “If a man extracts in return all he does for a friend, then it is business, not true friendship,” Ali said. “The greatness of a man depends on his heart, not on his education or wealth.”

Though he didn’t make the trip to Sweden, Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 for his body of work, the most recent of which was “The Old Man and the Sea.” The author asked the U.S. ambassador to Sweden, John C. Cabot, to read his speech for him at the ceremony, but Hemingway also recorded himself reading the speech from a radio station in Cuba.

In 1979, Alan Alda won so many Emmys that he had to start mixing up his approach to the stage to keep it interesting. That year, Alda became the only person to win Emmys for acting, directing, and writing in the same year, and he cartwheeled to the stage after his writing win. “The reason I was so exuberant a second ago,” Alda said, “is because it has been many years since I’ve been trying to be good at being a writer.”

When he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, Ted Williams delivered a clear message: Bring the legends from the Negro Leagues (the racially segregated teams before Major League Baseball was integrated in the 1950s) into the Hall of Fame. Williams said, “I hope someday the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson could be added as a symbol of the great Negro [League] players that are not here, only because they were not given the chance.”

Many Americans revered Douglas MacArthur as a hero of World War II. However, the controversial general’s 52-year career ended after a public clash with President Harry Truman over MacArthur’s military strategy for the Korean War, which led to his dismissal for insubordination in 1951. Two weeks later he addressed a joint session of Congress, noting that “old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”

“Win one for the Gipper” is one of the most famous speeches in sports history, but when it was delivered by Notre Dame football legend Knute Rockne, it was to one of his least successful teams. His 1928 Fighting Irish team went 5-4, and the coach used a story about his former player George Gipp to motivate the team against the Army team. From his hospital bed, Gipp had asked Rockne to tell his players to “win just one for the Gipper.”

When Jimmy Carter gave a live, televised address to the American people on July 15, 1979, the nation was in a dire economic place due to an energy crisis. OPEC cut oil production in 1973, and in his speech, the President admitted that he had failed to provide strong leadership on energy and oil consumption. Carter also attributed the economic issues to America’s lack of “moral and spiritual confidence.”

Often misremembered as “you like me, you really like me,” what Sally Field actually said when she accepted her Best Actress Oscar in 1985 was: “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. This time, I feel it. And I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!” The award, for her role in “Places in the Heart,” was actually her second Best Actress win; she also won five years earlier for the film “Norma Rae.”

In a fiery, Easter night speech from the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, Malcolm X detailed the plight of Black Americans who, generations before, were brought to the United States against their will. “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock,” Malcolm X said. “The rock was landed on us.”

President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address was delivered in March 1865. In one of the shortest inaugural speeches in history, Lincoln reflected on the meaning of the Civil War and the brutal toil of the four-year conflict, offering a conciliatory tone in an effort to reunite the nation. Lincoln would not live to see his hopes fulfilled, as he was assassinated just five weeks later.

New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig was a powerful hitter who played 2,130 consecutive games. The “Iron Horse’s” career came to a sudden end after he was diagnosed with ALS, now known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He said goodbye to the game at a ceremony at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, telling the crowd, "For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." Gehrig died in 1941, and his life — and farewell speech — was immortalized in the film “The Pride of the Yankees.”

In July 1896, William Jennings Bryan secured the Democratic nomination for the presidency (beating incumbent President Grover Cleveland) after delivering his “Cross of Gold” speech decrying the use of the gold standard for currency. Despite that historic moment, Bryan ultimately lost to William McKinley in the 1896 election. He also ran and lost in 1900 and in 1908.

In January 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address from the Oval Office. The legendary general and commander-in-chief spoke of the need for a well-armed United States, but cautioned against the influence of an unchecked military establishment and arms industry, which he feared posed a threat to American democracy.

Sojourner Truth was a born into slavery, but became a preacher and was involved with the antislavery and women’s rights movements. Truth’s famous speech at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention was also later published under the title “Ain’t I a Woman.”

In July 1971, Gloria Steinem spoke at a hotel conference in Washington, D.C., to more than 300 of America’s leading feminist activists. In her “Address to the Women of America,” Steinem addressed the issues of sexism, misogyny, racism, and poverty, with the goal of moving more women into positions of power. “There is no simple reform,” she said. “It really is a revolution.” At the time, 4.7% of U.S. state legislators were women; that number has now grown to about 31%.

In 1852, the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society invited abolitionist Frederick Douglass to deliver a speech on July 4. He declined, opting instead to speak on July 5. Douglass delivered versions of this speech many more times and included it in his second autobiography.

Maya Angelou became the first Black poet to speak at a presidential inauguration when she read “On the Pulse of the Morning” at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. Angelou never formally served as U.S. Poet Laureate, but she did win a Grammy for a recording of her speech.

In 1995, First Lady Hillary Clinton delivered a speech to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all," said the future Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee.

In 1775, Patrick Henry, the first governor of Virginia, attended the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond to discuss the state’s strategy against the British. Henry’s impassioned speech was integral in unifying the Virginia delegation to prepare troops for war against Great Britain.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered some 30 “fireside chats” during his 12 years in office. The first of these radio addresses was in March 1933, when he sought to ease fears over an ongoing banking crisis. Roosevelt was deeply involved in creating these informal, conversational “chats,” which he used to gain support for both his New Deal policies and the American war effort during World War II.

Dressed in military regalia, Queen Elizabeth I rallied English troops to defeat the attempted naval invasion of Spain in 1588. She declared that though she was a queen, she had the “heart and stomach of a king.” England’s victory and Elizabeth’s inspirational address proved a PR success. England’s reputation on the global scene grew, and the queen’s Armada speech was memorialized in paintings, poems, and books.

In September 1962, six weeks after cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person launched into space, JFK delivered a speech at Rice University, renewing America’s dedication to winning the Cold War-era “space race” against the Soviet Union. Kennedy’s inspirational pledge to put a man on the moon by 1970 was realized in July 1969, when Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface.

One month after becoming prime minister of England, Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons in June 1940, declaring that Britain would never give up its fight against Nazi Germany. The speech, one of several memorable addresses Churchill gave during the war, was intended to boost British morale and secure support for the Allied war effort from the United States, which finally entered the conflict in 1941.

Abraham Lincoln was incorrect when he said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here...” His Gettysburg Address would become quite well remembered indeed, and the memory of his words has lasted much longer than four score and seven (87) years. Among the notable lines is the proclamation that he was leader of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when he delivered the famous “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. About 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on the National Mall in D.C.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan traveled to Berlin to celebrate the city’s 750th anniversary. In a speech delivered just yards from the Berlin Wall that had divided the city since 1961, he called on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” taking aim at the most prominent physical symbol of the Cold War. Reagan’s speech marked a turning point in the conflict, and the Berlin Wall finally fell in November 1989.

On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address that included the oft-cited quote, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

The country was in the depths of the Great Depression when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933. In his inaugural address, Roosevelt tried to give Americans hope as he laid out his plans to fight the economic downturn.