# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published August 18, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/top-15-orators-of-all-time*

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## Current results (4 votes)

1. **Abraham Lincoln** — 50% (2 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Redefined the war in 272 words at Gettysburg while the main speaker talked for two hours.
2. **Winston Churchill** — 25% (1 votes · score 992/1000)
   His 1940 speeches were cited in the Nobel citation alongside his books.
3. **Martin Luther King Jr.** — 25% (1 votes · score 907/1000)
   The Lincoln Memorial speech of 1963 is the most quoted American address of the century.
4. **Cicero** — 0% (0 votes · score 872/1000)
   Rome's benchmark orator, whose speeches against Catiline became the model for Latin rhetoric.
5. **Elizabeth I** — 0% (0 votes · score 714/1000)
   The Tilbury speech turned an invasion scare into a piece of national theatre.
6. **Patrick Henry** — 0% (0 votes · score 571/1000)
   Gave the American Revolution its most quotable ultimatum in 1775.
7. **John F. Kennedy** — 0% (0 votes · score 381/1000)
   His inaugural gave the century one of its most repeated sentences.
8. **Malcolm X** — 0% (0 votes · score 381/1000)
   Brought the cadence of the street corner to a national argument about civil rights.
9. **Nelson Mandela** — 0% (0 votes · score 381/1000)
   Spoke for four hours from the dock in 1964 and said he was prepared to die for it.
10. **Susan B. Anthony** — 0% (0 votes · score 260/1000)
   Toured for decades making the same argument until the law finally moved.
11. **Demosthenes** — 0% (0 votes · score 260/1000)
   Athenian who reportedly cured a stammer with pebbles and then out-argued Macedon.
12. **Frederick Douglass** — 0% (0 votes · score 260/1000)
   Escaped slavery and became the most formidable platform speaker in 19th-century America.
13. **Mahatma Gandhi** — 0% (0 votes · score 260/1000)
   Made a quiet voice carry further than a loud one across a subcontinent.
14. **Barack Obama** — 0% (0 votes · score 260/1000)
   Came to national attention on the strength of a single convention speech in 2004.
15. **Sojourner Truth** — 0% (0 votes · score 114/1000)
   Her 1851 address to an Ohio women's convention is still recited from memory.

Tags: all-time, leaders, speeches