Greatest Speeches of All Time Series

Today we start a journey through the greatest speeches of all time. I will create a series of images, each containing two or more speeches clouds intentionally grouped together and linked by authorship, theme/topic, or a specific time period so we may compare and contrast their flow if ideas. Here are two very important things to keep in mind: 1. Each speech cloud contains EVERY word on the speech transcript; 2. The word sizes are directly related to the frequency they are mentioned on the speech. So, the larger the font size, the higher the frequency a word is repeated on the speech.

The first image contains three key speeches from the American Civil Rights movement. They are “I Have a Dream” and “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and “The Ballot or the Bullet” by Malcom X. You may listen to them here, here and here. They are ordered chronologically. My hope is that these works of art may awaken you to learn more of the English language, dive deeper in in the knowledge and understanding of American/British life and culture. My initial source will be the Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century list. the speech clouds were created on Wordle. I hope you enjoy them. 🙂