肯尼迪的就职演说算得上是比较经典之作。不过也是他和他的助手反复推敲，研究的结果。下面这段话摘自"Stamps Tell the Story of John F. Kennedy":
"Kennedy's speeches are exceptionally rousing and inspring. They were excellent rhetoric. After his special assistant, Sorensen, had studied Lincoln's Gettyburg address, he was able to report to his chief that Lincoln had never used a two-or-three-syllable word where one-syllable word would do, and had never used two or three words where one word would do."
研究得真仔细！林肯的演说也是传世之作。林肯能用一个音节的单词绝对不会用两三个音节的单词，能用一个单词说明白意思绝对不会用两三个单词。
他的演讲堪称简洁有力。
英文中有一个短语"in words of one syllable"是指用词简单易懂：
in words of one syllable saying something in a way
that is very easy to understand, especially because the person you are
talking to is stupid:
You have to put everything in words of one syllable
for her.
唐朝诗人白居易，每当作好了一首诗，总是先念给牧童或老 妇人听，然后再反复修改，直到他们听了拍手称好，才算定稿。
所以，我们可以说，"Bai Juyi wrote poems in words of one syllable."
莎士比亚曾经说过，"Brevity is the soul of wit." 也是强调简洁的力量。
下面是林肯的盖茨堡演说。大家看看是不是很简洁。
The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
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.