Great Speeches, Lectures, and Talks Most People Have Never Heard Of

Not long ago, I came across a little-known speech titled, You and Your Research.

The speech had been delivered in 1986 by Richard Hamming, an accomplished mathematician and computer engineer, as part of an internal series of talks given at Bell Labs. I had never heard of Hamming, the internal lecture series at Bell Labs, or this particular speech. And yet, as I read the transcript, I came across one useful insight after another.

After reading that talk, I got to thinking… What other great talks and speeches are out there that I've never heard? As far as I know this is the only place where you can read transcripts of these speeches in one place.

Famous Speeches, Lectures, and Talks

This list is organized by presenter name and then speech topic. Click the links below to jump to a specific speech. On each page, you'll find a full transcript of the speech as well as some additional background information.

• Steve Jobs' MIT Distinguished Speaker Series Speech from 1992
• Steve Jobs' “You Never Know What’s Around the Next Corner” Lecture at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business
• Jony Ive's “CCA Commencement Address and Advice for the Graduating Class”
• Ed Catmull's “Keep Your Crises Small”
• Rob Pardo's “Excellence is a Journey, Not a Destination”

• General Patton's “Speech to the Third Army”

• Chemist Louis Pasteur's “Worship the Spirit of Criticism”
• William Safire's “Denunciation of the Telephone as the Subverter of Good English”
• Charlie Munger's “Strengths and Weaknesses After Considering Interdisciplinary Needs”
• Broadcast John Hilton's “A Talk About Talking”
• Benjamin Franklin's Federal Convention Address “I consent, sir, to this Constitution…”
• John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s “Sets Forth His Family Creed”
• Jeff Bezos' “Statement by Jeff Bezos to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary”
• Jeff Bezos' “What Matters More Than Your Talents”
• John Cleese's “Creativity in Management”
• William Deresiewicz's “Solitude and Leadership”
• Richard Feynman's “Seeking New Laws”
• Neil Gaiman's “Make Good Art”
• Rob Pardo's “Rob Pardo's AGC Keynote on Blizzard Entertainment's Design Philosophy”
• John W. Gardner's “Personal Renewal”
• Albert E. N. Gray's “The Common Denominator of Success”
• Bill Gurley's “Runnin Down a Dream”
• Richard Hamming's “Learning to Learn”
• Richard Hamming's “You and Your Research”
• Steve Jobs' “2005 Stanford Commencement Address”
• Peter Kaufman's “The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking”
• Admiral William H. McRaven's “Make Your Bed”
• Charlie Munger's “2007 USC Law School Commencement Address”
• Charlie Munger's “A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom”
• Charlie Munger's “How to Guarantee a Life of Misery”
• Charlie Munger's “The Revised Psychology of Human Misjudgment”
• J.K. Rowling's “The Fringe Benefits of Failure”
• George Saunders' “Failures of Kindness”
• Claude Shannon's “Creative Thinking”
• BF Skinner's “How to Discover What You Have to Say”
• Bret Victor's “Inventing on Principle”
• David Foster Wallace's “This is Water”
• Art Williams's “Just Do It”
• J. Robert Oppenheimer's “Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists”
• Steve Jobs' SIGGRAPH Keynote Speech on Pixar and Toy Story in 1995
• William Lyon Phelps' “The Love of Books”
• Arno Rafael Minkkinen's “Finding Your Own Vision”

This is an on-going project. If you know of another great talk, please contact me.