When They Go Low, We Go High: Speeches that shape the world – and why we need them

by Philip Collins

Cicero gives us a portrait of the ideal orator. There was no separation, for him, between rhetoric and politics, so the orator needed to be steeped in political wisdom, to display a command of language and psychological insight into the audience, to be witty, shrewd and funny. In an age in which speeches were delivered by heart, the orator needed perfect recall. They also needed a resonant voice, although not all of them have had it. Demosthenes practised with pebbles in his mouth with the aim of improving his timbre. Abraham Lincoln was barely audible at Gettysburg, Winston Churchill sought medical help over his lisp, and John F. Kennedy’s voice was often said to be too reedy for his grand words. The central point of De oratore, what Cicero calls