The Audacity of Hope! Excerpts from Barack Obama's Speech at the Democratic National Convention There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states. Red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope? John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a mill worker's son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!

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Learning from the Debates: How to Deliver a Winning Presentation Did you know that President Bush and Senator Kerry shared the same oratory teacher and debate coach, two years apart, in Yale University? Their teacher, Dr. Rolling G. Osterweis, who died in 1982, taught a class titled, History of American Oratory, for a quarter-century. Both Bush and Kerry took the course, studying famous addresses by William Jennings Bryan, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, among others, as well as delivering a speech to Professor Osterweis and the class. Mr. Kerry became a star on the Yale debate team, with Professor Osterweis as coach. So what were the presentation techniques that Professor Osterweis taught these two students that helped them rise to their positions of power? And how can you use the same techniques to your advantage? Aides to President Bush say that he took from the class three key lessons that he uses today: 1-The importance of direct language President Bush once wrote on a draft of a speech submitted to him by his speech writer, "That section is way too passive; I'm not bobbing along like some cork; I want active verbs." The key lesson: Use active verbs to give your speech power and authority. Say, "I created a program for helping school children" not, "A program to help school children has been created." 2- Creating organized speeches: Karen P. Hughes, President Bush's Communication Director and advisor, writes that she was once so frustrated with the President's comments on her draft that she asked him how a speech should be written. He scrawled out for her that a speech should have "an introduction, three major points, then a peroration - a call to arms, tugs on the heartstrings, then a conclusion." 3- Connecting with the audience It was reported that Professor Osterweis taught students two main lessons. "First, you have to have substance - values and principles that are worth conserving. Then you have to communicate them in a way that makes the audience feel that they have ownership of the ideas. It's almost like you have to become part of the crowd, and have them go away adopting the ideas as their own." Key lesson: Make sure to connect with your audience with eye-contact, appropriate language, personal stories, and warm personality. The ideas you're talking about are not as important as your own personality. It's the Messenger, not the message.   Get the Thank God It's Monday Newsletter Email: Send Page To a Friend

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The Gettysburg Address - Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

'I HAVE A DREAM' LEADS TOP 100 SPEECHES OF THE 20th CENTURY The mastery and magic of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous " I Have a Dream" speech earned it top honors in a the list of the 100 best political speeches of the 20th century. Compiled by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A&M University, the list reflects the opinions of 137 leading scholars of American public address. The experts were asked to recommend speeches on the basis of social and political impact, and rhetorical artistry. Stephen Lucas, UW-Madison professor of communication arts, and Martin Medhurst, professor of speech communication at Texas A&M, say the new list confirms that excellence in American public oratory has thrived during the last 100 years. "While it has become fashionable to bemoan the death of eloquence, this list makes it clear that the 20th century has produced public speeches of the highest order," Lucas says. King delivered "I Have a Dream" during the civil rights march on Washington Aug. 28, 1963. Says Medhurst, "His eloquent vision of a day when his own children 'would live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character' persuasively articulated the American dream within the context of the civil rights struggle." Following "I Have a Dream" on the list are John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address, best known for the famous challenge, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address, March 4, 1933 and his declaration of war, Dec. 8, 1941, make FDR the only person with two speeches in the top five. Barbara Jordon's keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, July 12, 1976, completes the top five. Surveyed scholars cited her eloquence, power and masterful delivery, as well as the historical importance of the first keynote by an African-American woman. The rest of the top 10 are: 6- Richard Nixon's "Checkers" speech of 1952. 7- Malcom X's 1964 "The Ballot or the Bullet." 8-Ronald Reagan's 1986 eulogy of the Challenger astronauts. 9-JFK's address to the Houston Ministerial Association during the 1960 presidential campaign. 10-Lyndon Johnson's "We Shall Overcome" speech that helped secure passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Lucas and Medhurst say the list has yielded some interesting information, including the fact that three of the top 10 speeches were delivered by African Americans, reflecting the importance of the civil rights movement and the black oral tradition. Twenty-three of the top 100 were delivered by women. Two speeches by women in the 1990s fared especially well: Hillary Rodham Clinton's 1995 address at the United Nations World Conference on Women (No. 35), well ahead of her husband's only ranked speech (No. 92), made at a prayer service for Oklahoma City bombing victims. And while George Bush didn't make the list at all, wife Barbara Bush's 1990 commencement address at Wellesley College ranked No. 47. Lucas notes that the list, which also includes speeches by Jesse Jackson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mario Cuomo, and famed attorney Clarence Darrow, reminds us of the power of the spoken word throughout American history. "Despite our computer age," he says, "there is still no substitute for public speech to lead, galvanize, console and inspire."

Martin Luther King, Jr.: I Have a Dream Speech (Excerpts) Delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation (...) I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. And this will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!" And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring -- from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. / Let freedom ring -- from the mighty mountains of New York. / Let freedom ring -- from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. / Let freedom ring -- from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. / Let freedom ring -- from the curvaceous slopes of California. / But not only that. Let freedom ring -- from Stone Mountain of Georgia. / Let freedom ring -- from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. / Let freedom ring -- from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring! And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

Reagan's Best Words From The Space Shuttle "Challenger" Tragedy Address, Delivered 28 January 1986 The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

We Are Virginia Tech We say with Virginia Tech’s poet and English Professor Nikki Giovanni, “We Are Virginia Tech.” Here is the powerful poem she delivered one day after the April 16, 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech University: We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech. " Get innovative ideas and articles on communication and culture change from our TGIM newsletter:   Get the Thank God It's Monday Newsletter Email: Send Page To a Friend