What makes a great speaker?

I often hear people say, “wow that was a great speaker” or “man that was an amazing speech.” But what really makes a good speaker and what really makes a great speech? I have recently asked myself this question and tried to figure it out myself. I believe what makes a great speaker is tone and diction along with a good appearance, although I don’t believe appearance always determines a great speaker and I’ll explain later. As far as a great speech goes I believe it needs to be one that pertains primarily to what is suppose to be discussed. Like for example with Martin Luther King Jr. Speech “I have a dream” it was based solely on overcoming a prejudice society. He didn’t switch between subjects. He kept the message simple but delivered it with a stark tone. He captured the heart and minds with his speech. I believe that you can have great words jotted on a piece of paper and it still is a lousy speech. It takes the right person to rely those words in order to make it a memorable one. Another great speaker that comes to my mind is Ronald Reagan. Even though he was very soft spoken he had a way of making words powerful and his appearance always seemed to be spot on. This brings me back however to the point I made earlier about how appearance isn’t necessarily everything. I remember going to a high school commencement speech about three years ago. The speaker was a well known neurosurgeon who graduated from Harvard medical. The first thing that came to my mind before even seeing him was, “I bet this guy looks rich.” But once he got up on stage that was far from the truth. He was wearing extremely faded blue jeans and a sweater that looked like it was from the seventies. He had a really long beard and very long uncombed hair. I thought to myself this can be the same person who is in the program. But it was. The grubby old looking man was actually a brain surgeon. I kept thinking to myself in a sarcastic way, “wow this is going to be good.” But very shortly after he began speaking I was instantly intrigued. The speech he delivered ended up being one of the best speeches I have ever heard. I just goes to show that it takes all different types of people with different types of words to make a truly amazing and good speech.