The Top 10 shortest speeches

‘Be sincere, be brief, be seated.’ Advice from Franklin D Roosevelt to his son on public speaking

Sage advice from Franklin D Roosevelt (Getty)

Daniel Gover, senior lecturer in politics at Queen Mary, University of London, found a one-word, one-syllable, one-letter speech, No 1 on this list. Thanks to Jo-Anne Burrow for suggesting a Top 10.

1. “I –” Chris Ruane, a Labour MP, in the Commons in 2012. Nigel Evans, the deputy speaker, stopped him because time had run out: “Order. It is 2.30. One of your best speeches, Mr Ruane.” Ruane had been about to contribute to the debate on the second reading of the Smoke-Free Private Vehicles Bill, a private member’s bill from the House of Lords, which never made it on to the statute book.

2. “Thank you.” Patty Duke’s speech on accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, 1963, for The Miracle Worker. Thanks to Annabel Nugent. There have been a few of these: my favourite was Merritt Weaver, accepting her Emmy award for Best Supporting Actress, 2013, for Nurse Jackie, 11 words: “Thank you so very much. Um, I gotta go. Bye.” See also No 4.

3. “If not now, when?” Charles Walker, Conservative MP for Broxbourne, on the case for a referendum on EU membership, 2011.

4. “Thank you… very much indeed.” Alfred Hitchcock, accepting the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968. (He had been nominated for four Oscars by then, but had not won one and never would.)

5. “I shall be so brief that I have already finished.” Salvador Dali, addressing a news conference in 1980, after six months in seclusion.

6. “You’re wrong. You’re lying. And you’re making me angry.” Speech in Hull City Council about 15 years ago, witnessed by Carl Minns, who commented: “Elegance personified.”

7. “Since I came to this House 30 years ago, I have always felt that the House is at its best when it is united. In order that unity can be maintained, I have decided that I will relinquish the office of speaker on Sunday 21 June. This will allow the House to proceed to elect a new speaker on Monday 22 June. That is all I have to say on this matter.” Michael Martin, 72 words, 2009.

8. “My lords, and gentlemen, we have to inform you by the command of Her Majesty that the present parliament has been assembled in obedience to the terms of Her Majesty’s proclamation of 28 June 1892, by which the late parliament was dissolved.

“Previous to that dissolution the business of the session was completed; and it is therefore not necessary that parliament should now continue in session at an unusual period of the year for the transaction of financial or legislative business.

“It is Her Majesty’s hope that when you meet again at the customary season you will again direct your attention to measures of social and domestic improvement, and that you will continue to advance in the path of useful and beneficent legislation, which has been so judiciously followed in previous sessions.” Shortest King or Queen’s speech: 132 words, delivered by the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Halsbury, on behalf of Queen Victoria, 8 August 1892. Nominated by David Boothroyd.

9. “Fellow citizens, I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its chief magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavour to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honour, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.

“Previous to the execution of any official act of the president the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: that if it shall be found during my administration of the government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.” George Washington’s second inaugural address, 1793, 135 words. Thanks to SFclgh and Carl Minns.

10. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, 1863, 272 words, depending on how you count them (he wrote “can not” as two words) and which contemporary report or which of his five handwritten versions is regarded as the most authentic (see also Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, 1992).

I have already done a Top 10 speeches so short that they were never delivered.

Next week: Cabinet ministers whose first and second names end in the same two letters.

Coming soon: Political sayings about meat, starting with “Where’s the beef?”

Your suggestions please, and ideas for future Top 10s, to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk