It's difficult to construct a great speech that's transformational in its nature, but this graduation speech to the students at SMU is worth looking looking into.
This 17 minute video captured the powerful words of a truly great speaker. While it is hard to tell from the video, it appears Dr. King started his presentation by reading from a script, then stopped reading from his prepared notes and started speaking extemporaneously.
Most business presentations are pretty boring but Jobs has mastered the art of the presentation. You don't have to watch the entire presentation, but one can see why the iphone generated so much publicity.
Text and Videos
One can learn to become a great speaker but one needs to have both great content and great delivery. This is not an easy thing to do.
Steve Jobs — 2005 Graduation Speech as Stanford—Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
This is one case, where I do prefer the text to the video version but you should enjoy it if you enjoy a few good stories.
Bill Clinton — 2008 Speech at the Democratic National Convention
In terms of polishing communication skills, you might like to look at a recent speech by Bill Clinton. Although it is fairly ethnocentric, focused as it is on the American politics, you get a feel for how to good delivery interacts with good content.
This page has a large number of speeches, articles, and some interviews made by various presenters, many of them university professors. A good resource.
Saxton
has put together a number of great speeches, from the not so well
known to extremely famous individuals. On the well known side, you
will find speeches by:
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