Great Fictional Speeches

[LeeArac]

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied ? chains us all, irrevocably... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged." - Jean Luc Picard, in "The Drumhead"


Not much of a speech, but honestly good enough that it genuinely surprised me the quote was written from the show and not the words of some actual historical orator.

 

[Nemusus]

Rocky Balboa has one of the best speeches, in my opinion:

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[CrazyGirl17]

Since some of my other choices have been taken, here's one from a place you might not expect:


I love this show.

 

[Smeatza]

Ooh I get to pull this one out of the bag

Spoiler: Bing's Speech

It comes from an episode in the series "Black Mirror," called "15 Million Merits."
I would HIGHLY recommend watching the full episode (it's self contained and an hour long), not only because it's awesome, but to get the most out of the speech above.

The full episode can be found below. I don't know if you'll have trouble watching it outside of the UK though.
The firefox plug-in "Media-hint" might work.

Spoiler: The full episode

The series concerns itself with the impact of technological progression on humanity and "15 million merits" concerns itself mainly with social media and reality TV, with a dystopian future twist.

 

[Thomas Barnsley]

probably not the best but its my favorite.

yes, that is amazing. also the start of the movie has a good speech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgRvbR4f3d4

someone even made it into a nice word-thing.

 

[OneCatch]

Bill Pullman.

ID4.

Made me smile even back then.

Nuff said.

Hehe, see I always preferred Jimmy's joke speech before the first dogfight. That's more because it's so ridiculous it became a recurring joke with my friends though!


PS no idea if that vid works because unable to play it atm, just saw the title

 

[Vhite]

I have never seen the movie but Cracked has brought me to this one.

 

[spartandude]

Captain Kirrahe is pretty badass, his speach is not only awesome on it also gives some background on the Salarians without being exposition heavy.

 

[HisAdamant]

One of the best, albeit short, speeches in fiction.

"Onto the next project!"

 

[Tallim]

This...

and this:


and this short number from Beowulf:

 

[Entitled]

This, from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

(Ex tempore speech given by General Potter to the Chaos Legion, immediately before their first battle, on November 3rd, 1991, at 2:56pm

My troops, I'm not going to lie to you, our situation today is very grim. Dragon Army has never lost a single battle. And Hermione Granger... has a very good memory. The truth is, most of you are probably going to die. And the survivors will envy the dead. But we have to win this. We have to win this so that someday, our children can enjoy the taste of chocolate again. Everything is at stake here. Literally everything. If we lose, the whole universe just blinks out like a light bulb. And now I realize that most of you don't know what a light bulb is. Well, take it from me, it's bad. But if we have to go down, let's go down fighting, like heroes, so that as the darkness closes in, we can think to ourselves, at least we had fun. Are you afraid to die? I know I am. I can feel those cold shivers of fear like someone is pumping ice cream into my shirt. But I know... that history is watching us. It was watching us when we changed into our uniforms. It was probably taking pictures. And history, my troops, is written by the victors. If we win this, we can write our own history. A history in which Hogwarts was founded by four renegade house elves. We can make everyone study that history, even though it isn't true, and if they don't answer the right way on our tests... they'll fail the class. Isn't that worth dying for? No, don't answer that. Some things are better left unknown. None of us know why we're here. None of us know why we're fighting. We just woke up in these uniforms in this mysterious forest, knowing only that there was no way to get our names and memories back except victory. The students in those other armies out there... they're just like us. They don't want to die. They're fighting to protect each other, the only friends they have left. They're fighting because they know they have families who'll miss them, even if they can't remember now. They may even be fighting to save the world. But we have a better reason to fight than they do. We fight because we like it. We fight to amuse eldritch monstrosities from beyond Space and Time. We fight because we're Chaos. Soon the final battle will begin, so let me say now, because I won't get a chance later, that it was an honor to be your commander, however briefly. Thank you, thank you all. And remember, your goal isn't just to cut down the enemy, it's to make them afraid.

 

[Guffe]

Many very good ones here.
I'll pick one that I didn't see among the ones already chosen.

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

Guys, guys, guys.

Guys.

THIS.


Also, any of V's speeches in V for Vendetta.

I don't like that speech because whilst I get what it's trying to say, its wrong. Look at foxes, rats, wild boar. None of those form a 'natural equilibrium with their environment' if they can help it. they breed and breed and eat all the food and suffer a population crash and the cycle repeats. Heck even single celled organisms do this. Wine is made by yeast eating fruit sugar and breeding until they all get poisoned from their own waste product.

Viruses on the other hand have a different life cycle involving taking control of host cells to make them produce more viruses.

The breed and eat until you starve or drown in waste puts us firmly in the animal category, as opposed to viral.

 

[Silverbeard]

Kudos go to Buzz Killington for putting up the Ken Branaugh version of Henry the Fifth's speech. That was fancy stuff and I still enjoy listening to it.

 

[spartan231490]

No doubt:

 

[PayNSprayBandit]

The Be Afraid Speech

Air Force One

 

[MrMixelPixel]

I've always loved this one. One of the finest moments in uhhhh Batman.

 

[Azahul]

I always thought it was rather nice of them to announce their presence with war horns and then form up in plain sight allowing the Orcs to reorganise their ranks and deploy pikemen to the new front rather than just smashing into the flank of the host that was focused in the other direction.

I guess what they did was more honourable or something but what I would have done would have minimised friendly casualties, maximised enemy casualties and had a fairly devastating affect on morale (trained horsemen out of fucking nowhere? Aww hell no)

The horns serve a few purposes. The first, an army doesn't operate like a hive mind, and there were a lot of Rohirrim there. The horns help coordinate them. The second, it lets their presence be known to the men inside Minas Tirrith, enabling them to launch a counter attack as the Rohirrim charge (it's been a while since I read the books, but I have an impression that this was the moment when Prince Imrahil led the Swan Knights on a sortie). The third, scares the crap out of the enemies. The Orc army was massive, and there was no way they'd be able to relocate enough pikemen and archers to form a solid wall before the Rohirrim hit. The horns do a great job of spreading the fear to the entire enemy army.

Your idea of a silent charge out of nowhere is rather unlikely. It would have led to different parts of the Rohirrim charge striking the Orc lines at different times, rather than the coordinated charge they managed to pull off. Armies just aren't very quiet, not when you're trying to yell orders to several thousand men.

Also note that the Rohirrim had already formed their ranks by the time they arrived. The Orcs really didn't get much time to prepare, all things considered, and I'd say the benefits to communication presented by the horns outweighed the very slight disadvantage of the few seconds they did get.

 

[Casual Shinji]

This one little speech from The Fly just makes the movie and perfectly encapsulates the tragedy of it all.

 

[JemothSkarii]

I always think this, while short, is a great speech (sort of) from MGSV:

"Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel my leg... And my arm... even my fingers... The body I've lost... the comrades I've lost... won't stop hurting... It's like they're all still there. You feel it, too, don't you? I'm gonna make them give back our past!"