# The 17 Greatest Speeches in American History

> Two minutes at a cemetery, a farewell printed in a newspaper, a ballplayer who called himself lucky. Rank the words that stuck.

*By YPB Team · Published August 19, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-17-greatest-speeches-in-american-history*

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## Current results (5 votes)

1. **I Have a Dream** — 60% (3 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Martin Luther King Jr. speaking from the Lincoln Memorial steps in August 1963.
2. **Washington's Farewell Address** — 20% (1 votes · score 785/1000)
   Washington's printed 1796 letter to the nation explaining why he was going home.
3. **The Gettysburg Address** — 0% (0 votes · score 636/1000)
   Lincoln's 272 words at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery in November 1863.
4. **Barbara Jordan's 1976 Keynote** — 20% (1 votes · score 568/1000)
   The first Black woman to keynote a national convention, on what the country owed itself.
5. **Susan B. Anthony's 'Is It a Crime?'** — 0% (0 votes · score 508/1000)
   The 1873 courtroom-circuit speech delivered after she was arrested for voting.
6. **Franklin's Closing Speech at the Convention** — 0% (0 votes · score 508/1000)
   Benjamin Franklin's 1787 plea that the delegates sign a Constitution none of them loved entirely.
7. **Chief Joseph's Surrender Speech** — 0% (0 votes · score 454/1000)
   The 1877 words 'I will fight no more forever', spoken at the end of the Nez Perce flight.
8. **Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate** — 0% (0 votes · score 454/1000)
   The 1987 Berlin speech built around four words: 'tear down this wall'.
9. **Lou Gehrig's Farewell** — 0% (0 votes · score 394/1000)
   The 1939 Yankee Stadium goodbye from a dying ballplayer who called himself lucky.
10. **Eisenhower's Farewell Address** — 0% (0 votes · score 324/1000)
   The 1961 warning about the 'military-industrial complex' from a departing general-president.
11. **Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July** — 0% (0 votes · score 245/1000)
   The 1852 Rochester address asking what the holiday meant to an enslaved American.
12. **Kennedy's Moon Speech at Rice** — 0% (0 votes · score 245/1000)
   The 1962 case for going to the Moon 'not because it is easy, but because it is hard'.
13. **Patrick Henry's 'Liberty or Death'** — 0% (0 votes · score 151/1000)
   The 1775 Virginia convention speech that pushed the colony toward revolution.
14. **Sojourner Truth's 'Ain't I a Woman?'** — 0% (0 votes · score 151/1000)
   The 1851 Akron women's rights speech that fused abolition and suffrage in one argument.
15. **FDR's First Inaugural** — 0% (0 votes · score 151/1000)
   Roosevelt telling a collapsing 1933 economy that the only thing to fear was fear itself.
16. **Lincoln's Second Inaugural** — 0% (0 votes · score 41/1000)
   The 1865 address that ended with 'with malice toward none, with charity for all'.
17. **JFK's Inaugural Address** — 0% (0 votes · score 41/1000)
   Kennedy's 1961 call to 'ask not what your country can do for you'.

Tags: usa, politics, speeches