To merely pass on interesting things that other people are saying: Disconnect mentions Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech and passes on American Rhetoric’s Top 100 speeches.
I’ve been listening/watching several (a little MLK, a little JFK, Elizabeth Glaser, etc). The textual transcripts are available as well, but I have to admit that I haven’t read any on this site. I listen, I watch, but I haven’t sat here and read the speeches.
I suppose it’s that I’m not old enough to have experienced the majority of these first hand. I have to rely on the captured media to hear it and experience it, and not as a mere cognitive understanding. While I can read the text and get a feeling from the words, I like hearing the delivery of a speech. Speeches are so dependent on the speech giver and their ability to convey passion, care, personality, elegance, etc etc. I like to experience to speech giver as much as the speech.