One of the most famous speeches in American history -- the Gettysburg address -- is 278 words. It likely took President Abraham Lincoln three minutes to deliver this speech. I bet the introductions ran longer.
This speech isn't famous because Lincoln did such a wonderful job of delivering the words. We don't have film of the speech.
It's a great speech because it delivers big ideas with power and purpose.
Here are those 278 words:
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 battle-field 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 can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not 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 honored 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.
Lincoln proves that a big speech doesn't have to be big.
Does this mean you can be booked to deliver a keynote speech during an hour-long lunch and speak for three minutes? Probably not.
What it means is public figures shouldn't confuse depth with length. Most people see a one-page speech and think its a trifle. A big speech has to be long, right? It's natural to think the more pages a speech or document has, the more important it is.
In an age of shrinking attention spans and TV soundbites, the reverse is true. Nobody ever complained about a speech being too short.