When Senator Barack Obama steps onto the stage on Thursday, next to Berlin’s Victory column, the world will be expecting a momentous speech.

   Great speakers: Enoch Powell, Mikhail Gorbachev, Barack Obama

   Great speakers: John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher

A team of Telegraph writers has compiled what they believe are the most significant addresses of the 20th and 21st centuries. The first tranche, speeches 25-13, can be viewed here. The top 12 are published here.

They limited the list to one speech per historical figure — otherwise, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King would have appeared more than once…….and, I think Obama’s speech on race relations delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, deserves to be in this list.

Notes: Video and Transcript of Senator Barack Obama’s Speech on Race – in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008