Inspiring Speeches

I suppose the concept of inspiring people through great oration is particularly appealing to me and when I am in need of inspiration I turn to reading or listening to amazing speeches.

A recent favorite of mine was Steve Jobs’ amazing commencement speech to the graduating Stanford class.

I also turn to this amazing site: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/. Most of the speeches don’t speak to me the same way Steve Jobs’ speech did, but are still extraordinary in their own way.

On a related note, my favorite collection is a 4-disk series called Great Speeches of the 20th Century.

(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000032HG/qid=1131305321/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-2587874-9276850?v=glance&s=music)

I listen to them every year and think most of you would really enjoy it too.

  • Bonjour Fabrice,
    very interesting indeed. I’ll probably follow your advice and get the disks.

    It’a always great to hear such stories. I worked for MSFT and had the chance to hear such speaches.

    It’a always inspiring, but it’s also good to remind that theses stories are brought by some people who, as talented as the are, were also lucky. I think it is an art to be able to use luck if you can get some, but still waht I mean is that it is dangerous to try to follow too directly the messages in those speaches.

    Anyway, it is great to hear and gives reasons to think about our own life, which is always good, even if we don’t change everything after this.

    I discovered your site coming from your psot on lesEchos.

    best regards,
    Olivier (ex-entrepreneur, but not as successful ;-)… maybe next time !!!)
    Bonnes fêtes de fin d’année.