A speech should pack a rhetorical punch, and delivering a memorable line can have a significant and lasting impact on your audience. Highly quotable phrases are known to persist in our personal and cultural memory, so the aim is to include at least one line in your speech that serves as a resonant soundbite.

Using famous examples to generate modern ones, here are 5 ways you can write a speech line people will remember.

1. Repeat words in a contradictory or reversed pattern

Famous example: 'Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.' - John F Kennedy, inaugural address, 1961.

Modern example: 'In counteracting the climate crisis, it's not how many changes you make, it's how consistently you make those changes.'

2. Liken your cause to a forceful image and suggest its primacy

Famous example: 'Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.' - Nelson Mandela, Madison Park High School, Boston, 23 June, 1990.

Modern example: 'Disinformation is the deadliest cancer of the digital age.'

3. Use a power-of-three formation with a crescendo

Famous example: 'Veni vidi vici.' ['I came, I saw, I conquered.'] - Julius Caesar, after swiftly defeating Pharnaces of Pontus in 47 BCE.

Modern example: 'As we persist in the fight against breast cancer, we remember, we respect and we honour our lost sisters, daughters and mothers.'

4. Invoke your own experience descriptively, making it part of a bigger picture

Famous example: 'I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters—two beautiful, intelligent, Black young women—playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.' - Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention, 2016.

Modern example: 'In putting my hands to my keyboard to publish my thoughts, in the safety and comfort of my home, I perform an action that millions of people are not able to.'

5. Repeat a word or phrase in successive clauses of similar structure

Famous example: 'We shall go on to the end, [...] we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...' - Winston Churchill in his speech of 4 June 1940 to the UK Parliament.

Example: 'You know the risks to your health, you know you want to quit, and now you know you're not alone. You know you want to be smoke-free, and with that mindset, you can be.'

Want my help identifying or creating a memorable line in your next speech? Contact me here.