Hi folks,
Seven score and 14 years ago, Lincoln needed a good speech.
Eh, wrong president and speech, but also awesome.
Anyhow, it was November 19, 1863 – four months after the battle of Gettysburg – and Lincoln had been invited to dedicate the battlefield as a national cemetery. He wasn’t billed as the keynote speaker that day, but he accepted the invitation and, with 272 words and two minutes, delivered one of the most powerful speeches in American history.
Entire books have been written about the speech, but there are two lessons I personally pull from it.
The first is the value of brevity. The headliner that day, Edward Everett spoke for over two hours. And while his oration was apparently well received, it has been fully eclipsed by Lincoln’s succinct and powerful speech. Everett later wrote Lincoln “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.” The lesson? Impact doesn’t require length. Choose your words carefully, maintain focus, and keep things short.
And in that spirit of brevity, I’ll save the second lesson for the next bomb.
Old Abe is clearly not referring to knowledge bombs.
Rex