Never give in, never give in,

never, never, never

in nothing, great or small, large or petty

never give in

This was the most famous speech of Winton Churchil, who was the prime minister of United Kingdom in World Wide War II. He delivered this speech in 1941, the most difficult time for British people.

The speech is short, it has less words but more power. The audience can feel the speaker’s courage, and easily remember the words. This speech encouraged British people and army to fight for their enemy, and win the war 4 years later.

We are toastmasters, we spend time pratising speech skills. Unlike teaching, the most important purpose of speech is to influence people.

A successful speech does not need more contents, it needs more influence. On the contrary, the most famous speech has less content. Usually, they are less than 20 minutes.

What’s the minimum size of one short speech? (Pause)

It could be one word.

In the movie, “Brave Heart”, the Scotland hero William Wallace delivered his last speech before he was going to die, “Freedom!”

This speech touched millions of people who watched the movie. It had only one word, but it was delivered by the hero’s life.

Less does not only mean the speech length, it also means the topics. A successful speech should be focus, and have fewer topics.

50 years before, in 1963, another real speech about “freedom” was delivered by Martin Luther King. The speech was “I have a dream”. It was a 15 minute speech, the key topic is freedom, the freedom of blacks. Let’s see how Martin was speaking in his speech.

Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

All these words are about freedom, the parallelism enhanced the feelings.

The speech inspired not only the blacks but also the whites, after the speech, blacks got their human rights quickly.

Now we know blacks not only have human rights, but also have American president, Barack Obama, who was elected as president for his great speeches.

In the 2008 election, he always focuses on his slogan “yes, we can”, in his key speech, he said:

Yes we can, to justice and equality. Yes we can, to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.

He always said Yes, We can, people were convinced, yes, he can, yes he can with us, yes we can.They voted for him as first black presidents of United States in history.

One slogan has the power of American President.

When we have fewer topics, less contents, our emotions and power are concentrated. We can pass strong messages to our audience, and get more influence.

Less content have more influence.

Less is More!

2015-03-19 Guangzhou