Tip 700: Sometimes You Just Talk from Your Heart

From the Speaking Workshops: Sometimes You Just Talk from Your Heart 

Two of the finest speeches of the twentieth century were impromptu. No notes. No planning. Given from the heart.*  

August 28th, 1963: Dr. Martin Luther King

Dr. King had planned to give an entirely different speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He’d stayed up late the night before perfecting the speech, but as he began, he sensed it didn’t seem right. He paused. 

Off to his right, his friend Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”

He took her advice. He went off-script. He looked to the crowd and said, “I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.” 

And the speech took flight: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

It wasn’t planned that way. It came from the heart.** 

April 4th, 1968: Senator Robert Kennedy

On the night that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Robert Kennedy was scheduled to speak in a predominately African-American neighborhood in Indianapolis.

His prepared remarks were now worthless. He had to address the assassination, but the crowd did not yet know of Dr King’s death. He began with the simplest and sincerest of words: “I have some very sad news.”

He spoke—without preparation—of healing: “What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another.”***

From the heart.

It works. 

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*An impromptu speech is one you haven’t prepared. An extemporaneous speech is one you’ve prepared but not memorized.

**See https://www.rd.com/article/split-second-decisions-history/

***See https://kennedykingindy.org/thespeech/