Presidential Acceptance Speeches: Top Lines and Phrases from Conventions Since 1960

C-SPAN's The Weekly

This summer, C-SPAN is bringing you live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of both the Republican and Democratic party conventions … featuring the presidential nomination acceptance speeches of Joe Biden and Donald Trump … If history is any guide, there will be at least one memorable line or phrase from each speech.

Like in 1964:

"So let us here tonight, each of us, all of us, rededicate ourselves to keeping burning the golden torch of promise which John Fitzgerald Kennedy set aflame”

That was President Lyndon Johnson, accepting the nomination at the 1964 Democratic National Convention… He ran for president a year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

And here’s his opponent -- Senator Barry Goldwater -- accepting the nomination at that year’s Republican National Convention

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”

The latest episode of C-SPAN's podcast "The Weekly" puts all these famous lines in historical context – going back to 1960.

What were the most iconic or meaningful or campaign-altering sentences and phrases from every acceptance speech since 1960?

What were the quick but big rhetorical moments that affected every presidential campaign over the past 64 years?

Find out in C-SPAN’s “The Weekly.”

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