Top 15 Orators of All Time

Marble busts and microphones in the same list. Some of these speeches ran for two hours; one ran under three minutes and outlived all of them.

1

Abraham Lincoln

Redefined the war in 272 words at Gettysburg while the main speaker talked for two hours.

1000pts

2

Winston Churchill

His 1940 speeches were cited in the Nobel citation alongside his books.

992pts

3

Martin Luther King Jr.

The Lincoln Memorial speech of 1963 is the most quoted American address of the century.

907pts

4

Cicero

Rome's benchmark orator, whose speeches against Catiline became the model for Latin rhetoric.

872pts

5

Elizabeth I

The Tilbury speech turned an invasion scare into a piece of national theatre.

714pts

6

Patrick Henry

Gave the American Revolution its most quotable ultimatum in 1775.

571pts

7

John F. Kennedy

His inaugural gave the century one of its most repeated sentences.

381pts

8

Malcolm X

Brought the cadence of the street corner to a national argument about civil rights.

381pts

9

Nelson Mandela

Spoke for four hours from the dock in 1964 and said he was prepared to die for it.

381pts

10

Susan B. Anthony

Toured for decades making the same argument until the law finally moved.

260pts

11

Demosthenes

Athenian who reportedly cured a stammer with pebbles and then out-argued Macedon.

260pts

12

Frederick Douglass

Escaped slavery and became the most formidable platform speaker in 19th-century America.

260pts

13

Mahatma Gandhi

Made a quiet voice carry further than a loud one across a subcontinent.

260pts

14

Barack Obama

Came to national attention on the strength of a single convention speech in 2004.

260pts

15

Sojourner Truth

Her 1851 address to an Ohio women's convention is still recited from memory.

114pts