SPEECHES

THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

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First published in 2005

This revised edition published 2014

Copyright © 2005, 2010, 2014 Quercus Editions Ltd

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A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN:

UK and associated territories: 978-1-84866-918-5

US and associated territories: 978-1-62365-452-8

Paperback ISBN:

978-1-84866-127-1

Hardback with DVD ISBN:

978-1-84866-864-5

Trade paperback with DVD ISBN:

978-1-84866-082-3

DVD boxed set ISBN:

978-1-84866-098-4

Hardback with audio CD ISBN:

978-1-84866-125-7

Ebook ISBN:

978-1-84866-857-7

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Original edition compiled and edited by the Cambridge Editorial Partnership

Design: Patrick Nugent

For this fully revised edition:

New text: Daniel Smith

Copyediting: Nick de Somogyi

Proofreading: Jessica Read and Sarah Chatwin

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Jesus of Nazareth

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’

From the Sermon on the Mount (St Matthew’s Gospel), 1st century AD

The Prophet Mohammed

‘Turn then your face towards the Sacred Mosque’

From the Surah al-Baqarah (Qu’ran), 7th century AD

Queen Elizabeth I

‘I have the heart and stomach of a king’

Speech to encourage the English militia at Tilbury, 8 August 1588

King Charles I

‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown’

Speech on the scaffold, 30 January 1649

Oliver Cromwell

‘In the name of God, go!’

Speech dismissing the Rump Parliament, 20 April 1653

George Washington

‘A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils’

Presidential farewell address, 17 September 1796

Thomas Jefferson

‘We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists’

Presidential inaugural address, 4 March 1801

Napoleon Bonaparte

‘Soldiers of my Old Guard: I bid you farewell’

Farewell speech to the Imperial Guard, 20 April 1814

Abraham Lincoln

‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people’

The Gettysburg Address, 19 November 1863

Susan B. Anthony

‘Are women persons?’

Touring lecture ‘Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?’, February–June 1873

Emmeline Pankhurst

‘I am here as a soldier’

Speech on the British campaign for women’s suffrage, 13 November 1913

Patrick Pearse

‘Ireland unfree shall never be at peace’

Funeral oration for Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, 1 August 1915

Woodrow Wilson

‘The world must be made safe for democracy’

Speech to Congress seeking a declaration of war, 2 April 1917

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

‘Power to the Soviets’

Speech advancing Bolshevik political aims, September 1917

Clarence Darrow

‘I believe in the law of love’

Closing speech in defence of Henry Sweet, 11 May 1926

Mohandas K. Gandhi

‘I have faith in the righteousness of our cause’

Speech on the eve of his ‘Salt March’, 11 March 1930

Franklin D. Roosevelt

‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’

Presidential inaugural address, 4 March 1933

‘A date which will live in infamy’

Speech to Congress seeking a declaration of war, 8 December 1941

Adolf Hitler

‘My patience is now at an end’

Speech demanding the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, 26 September 1938

‘I am from now on just first soldier of the Reich’

Speech announcing war with Poland, 1 September 1939

Neville Chamberlain

‘Peace for our time’

Statement following the Munich Conference, 30 September 1938

Joseph Stalin

‘It is imperative that we agree to conclude the pact’

Speech to the Politburo about the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 19 August 1939

Winston Churchill

‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’

‘We shall fight on the beaches’

‘This was their finest hour’

‘Never in the field of human conflict’

‘An iron curtain has descended’

Speeches on the Second World War and its aftermath 1940–6

Charles de Gaulle

‘The flame of French resistance must not and shall not die’

Radio appeal to create the Free French forces, 18 June 1940

Vyacheslav Molotov

‘Perfidy unparalleled in the history of civilized nations’

Radio broadcast condemning the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, 22 June 1941

George S. Patton, Jr

‘I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging sonofabitch Hitler’

Rallying speech to the US Third Army before D-Day, 5 June 1944

Emperor Hirohito

‘Enduring the unendurable’

Broadcast explaining Japan’s surrender, 15 August 1945

J. Robert Oppenheimer

‘We are not only scientists; we are men, too’

Speech on the atomic age and scientific responsibility, 2 November 1945

Jawaharlal Nehru

‘At the stroke of the midnight hour . . . India will awake’

Speech marking the independence of India, 14 August 1947

Douglas MacArthur

‘I have just left your fighting sons in Korea’

Farewell address to Congress, 19 April 1951

Nikita Khrushchev

‘The cult of the individual’

Secret speech denouncing Stalin at the 20th Communist Party Congress, 25 February 1956

John F. Kennedy

‘Ask not what your country can do for you’

Presidential inaugural address, 20 January 1961

‘Ich bin ein Berliner’

Speech at the Berlin Wall defending democracy, 26 June 1963

Martin Luther King, Jr

‘I have a dream’

Civil rights speech at the Lincoln Memorial, 28 August 1963

‘I’ve seen the promised land’

Civil rights speech on the eve of his assassination, 3 April 1968

Nelson Mandela

‘An ideal for which I am prepared to die’

Trial speech defending his actions and goals, 20 April 1964

‘Free at last’

Speech after ANC election victory, 2 May 1994

Malcolm X

‘You can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree’

Speech celebrating African descent, 14 February 1965

Pierre Trudeau

‘Who are the kidnap victims?’

Address during Quebec separatist crisis, 16 October 1970

Richard Nixon

‘There can be no whitewash at the White House’

National address promising transparency over the Watergate affair, 30 April 1973

Indira Gandhi

‘The special responsibility of the women of India’

Speech on the value of women’s education, 23 November 1974

Chaim Herzog

‘Hate, ignorance and evil’

United Nations address condemning anti-Semitism, 10 November 1975

Anwar al-Sadat

‘We accept to live with you in permanent peace’

Address to Israeli Knesset offering peace negotiations, 20 November 1977

Pope John Paul II

‘Our Polish freedom costs so much’

Address to his Polish compatriots, 18 June 1983

Ronald Reagan

‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’

Speech in West Berlin supporting democratic principles, 12 June 1987

Mikhail Gorbachev

‘Freedom of choice is a universal principle’

United Nations speech about Soviet reforms, 7 December 1988

Václav Havel

‘We live in a contaminated moral environment’

Broadcast reviewing the Czech communist past, 1 January 1990

Aung San Suu Kyi

‘It is not power that corrupts, but fear’

Acceptance of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, July 1991

Earl Spencer

‘The most hunted person of the modern age’

Funeral oration for Diana, Princess of Wales, 6 September 1997

Elie Wiesel

‘The perils of indifference’

Speech reviewing the 20th century’s calamities, 12 April 1999

George W. Bush

‘Today, our nation saw evil’

Address to the nation after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 11 September 2001

Gerry Adams

‘Our struggle has reached a defining moment’

Speech asking the Irish Republican Army to abandon violence, 6 April 2005

Al Gore

‘Political will is a renewable resource’

Address to the United Nations Bali Climate Change Conference, 14 December 2007

Kevin Rudd

‘To the stolen generations . . . I am sorry’

Parliamentary motion apologizing for the historic mistreatment of Australia’s Aboriginal people, 13 February 2008

Barack Obama

‘America is a place where all things are possible’

Speech after winning the US presidential election, 4 November 2008

Xi Jinping

‘This great responsibility is the responsibility to the people’

Speech to the Politburo Standing Committee Members’ meeting in Beijing, 15 November 2012

Pope Francis

‘Peace in the whole world, still divided by greed looking for easy gain’

First Easter ‘Urbi et Orbi’ Message, 31 March 2013

Malala Yousafzai

‘One pen and one book can change the world’

Speech to the United Nations Youth Assembly on access to education, 12 July 2013

Vladimir Putin

‘Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia.’

Address in the Kremlin regarding the annexation of Crimea, 18 March 2014

Acknowledgements

Introduction by Simon Sebag Montefiore

A GREAT SPEECH DOES NOT JUST CAPTURE THE TRUTH of its era; it can also capture the big lie. This wonderful collection of speeches contains uplifting hymns to democratic freedom that encapsulate the principles of decency and liberty that we cherish, good words that enlightened the world. But we can also read some of the most despicable speeches that darkened the horizons of the free world. It is the speeches by the monsters of history that are the real lessons.

Many of these speeches contain eternal truths, particularly a classic such as the Gettysburg Address, or less known orations by those such as Václav Havel, dissident and future Czech president, or Chaim Herzog, Israeli president. As a rule, simplicity of language marks superb speechmaking, as with Mohammed, Jesus or Martin Luther King, and it helps when the orator has written the words himself. But many reek of evil and folly; their lesson is that fine, philanthropic words can mask and distort as much as they reveal and enlighten. Some speeches are distinctly Orwellian. Some are simply untrue, some wicked and some we can simply judge better now with the tool of historical hindsight. Emperor Napoleon’s ‘farewell to the Old Guard’ is tear-jerking hokum, because he had never put his country before himself and his ambitions had layered the fields of Europe with the bodies of the young and innocent. Two speeches show bad men as superb political animals. In Lenin’s ‘all power to the Soviets’ speech in September 1917, it is hard to count the lies for he had no intention of giving power to the Soviets, the peasants or the workers; power was for himself and his party oligarchs. The disdain and cynicism are overwhelming. Adolf Hitler’s speeches reveal his virtuosity as a political agitator, national actor and speechwriter, but are riddled with cynical, brutal lies and camp, ludicrous posturing. Conversely, though Stalin’s views are despicably ruthless, the self-consciously ‘modest’ cobbler’s son delivers them with surprising plainness.

Then, of course, there are the poseurs, the deluded and the well-intentioned. Richard Nixon promised to prevent the very whitewash he was determined to accomplish. General Douglas MacArthur’s farewell is magnificent but reeks of vain delusion. When President Mikhail Gorbachev praised ‘freedom of choice’, he certainly did not mean his own people to receive so much of it that they threw him out – along with his beloved communism. Neville Chamberlain is even more the butt of the sad joke of hindsight in his ‘peace in our time’ speech; it is hard to imagine a greater error of judgement and a more pathetic delusion of achievement, expressed in simple words.

Many of these speeches thus reveal the character flaws and virtues of their orators, but each is also a window onto a great occasion in history. In the age of radio or television, most people would recall where they were when they heard George W. Bush’s speech on 9/11, Franklin Roosevelt’s after Pearl Harbor or Vyacheslav Molotov’s stammered reading of what were actually Stalin’s words after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Speeches delivered spontaneously are even more powerful: Charles I’s address must have been unforgettable, but it reveals the stubborn arrogance and proud pathos of the doomed monarch. Lord Protector Cromwell’s dismissal of Parliament reveals both his furious will and sanctimonious conviction of divine providence. Yet, for me, the best speech is one that marks no great event but merely pinpoints with splendid language, moral rigour and righteous fury, the essence of all decent civilization, a theme that runs through so many of these speeches: Elie Wiesel’s millennium address on the ‘perils of indifference’. We should know ALL these speeches. But if the reader remembers just Wiesel’s thoughts on history and the private individual, this book will truly have succeeded.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’

JESUS OF NAZARETH

From the Sermon on the Mount (St Matthew’s Gospel), 1st century AD

JESUS OF NAZARETH

Born c.4 BC or a little later in Bethlehem, Judaea (Palestine).

The Gospels record episodes from his adult life of preaching, healing, performing miracles, and challenging Jewish religious and political authority, as well as his travels through Galilee and beyond the Jewish world in Tyre and Sidon. On visiting Jerusalem some time between AD 26 and AD 30, where he was feted, he was condemned to death for blasphemy, and a sentence of crucifixion was imposed by the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.

Died c. AD 26–30 in Palestine. In Christian belief, Jesus’ death was followed by his resurrection.

For many people, The sayings of Jesus as presented in the Sermon on the Mount constitute the essence of Christian teaching. Beyond the Christian faith itself, they have informed basic ethical principles about how human beings should treat one another, and certain passages – including the verses known as the ‘Beatitudes’ (Blessings) and the Lord’s Prayer – have often become ingrained at childhood. Some Christian thinkers and biblical scholars view the sermon as a collection of discrete sayings gathered by early Christian writers, rather than a speech delivered on a particular occasion.

In historical terms, Jesus was born in Roman-ruled Palestine, under a puppet Jewish regime, at the end of the 1st century BC or early in the 1st century AD. He grew up in Nazareth and became an itinerant preacher in North Palestine for three years, during which time he gathered many followers who were attracted by his interpretation of Jewish law and the miracles ascribed to him. His criticism of Jewish religious leaders and warnings of the imminence of God’s rule replacing human rule provoked opposition from the Jewish and Roman establishments, leading to his death by crucifixion.

The four Gospels (meaning ‘Good News’) of the New Testament recount Jesus’ life and teachings, and are credited to four of his disciples: Matthew (which contains the Sermon on the Mount), Mark, Luke and John. They portray Jesus as living a life without material security or family support, often mixing with the poor and society’s outcasts, and constantly teaching that he would be rejected by the authorities, persecuted, suffer and die in order to fulfil God’s purpose. The Gospel writers vary in details, but all claim that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them on the same day, in fulfilment of Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah, the ‘Son of God’.

The historical Jesus has been variously viewed among non-Christians as a moral reformer, political revolutionary, Palestinian peasant, and charismatic rabbi. To Christians he might be all these things, but above all he was a prophet with a unique relationship with God, evidenced at his divine birth, whose death and resurrection delivered salvation to mankind.

The Christian movement quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean and was savagely suppressed in the 1st century AD by the Roman emperors Claudius and Nero. By the end of the century Jewish authorities in Palestine had adopted policies aimed at sharply differentiating Christians from Jews. But a world religion had been born, one that would underpin the development of Western society and culture.

MATTHEW 5, VERSES 3–11 (‘The Beatitudes’)

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

MATTHEW 6, VERSES 9–13 (‘The Lord’s Prayer’)

After this manner therefore pray ye:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

‘Turn then your face towards the Sacred Mosque’

THE PROPHET MOHAMMED

From the Surah al-Baqarah (Qu’ran), 7th century AD

THE PROPHET MOHAMMED

Born in 570, in Mecca, western Arabia. Orphaned at a young age, Mohammed was brought up by his grandfather and uncle.

At 25 he married a wealthy widow, Khadijah, and became a merchant in her business. In 610 Mohammed reported a vision of the Angel Gabriel who transmitted to him the first of many divine revelations, which he began to disseminate, attracting followers as well as opponents. In 619, the ‘year of sorrows’, his wife and uncle died, and his revelations reached their most intense phase. He escaped persecution, going north to Medina in 622 and establishing a loyal following there; subsequent years saw violent clashes with the Meccan nonbelievers. In 629 he undertook the first Haj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, but after a truce with Mecca broke down he led his forces to capture the city in 630.

Died 632 in Medina. Around 650, the third caliph, Uthman, ordered the creation of an authoritative Qu’ran.

For Muslims, The Qu’ran (or Koran) contains the words of Allah (God) as revealed to the Prophet Mohammed early in the 7th century AD. They were written down in a canonical version some years after Mohammed’s death, producing an Arabic text that has since not varied. The Qu’ran, together with the hadith (the life and teachings of Mohammed), form the twin pillars of Islam. As such, they have been hugely influential in structuring Muslim societies and the lives of individual believers, from the unification of the Arab tribes in the 7th century to the present day.

Among the revelations is God’s instruction concerning the qiblah, the direction in which Mohammed and his followers should pray, and which accounts for the practice of Muslims facing towards Mecca when at prayer. The Qu’ran is divided into surahs (verse-sections), and this passage occurs in the Surah al-Baqarah (‘The Cow’), Verse 2 (144–50).

The historical background to the passage relates to the year 622, when Mohammed and his followers fled the hostility of the unconverted Meccans to establish themselves in the northern city of Medina, a relocation known to Muslims as the hegira (or hijra). Medina also contained other religious groups – Jews, Nazarenes and Christians – who all offered their prayers towards Jerusalem, a city central to their beliefs. There were also worshippers in Medina who would turn towards the Ka’aba (literally ‘cube’), an ancient religious shrine and site of pilgrimage in Mecca. Mohammed at first offered his prayers towards Jerusalem; but he felt drawn towards offering his prayers towards the Ka’aba, the house that his ancestors and the prophets Abraham and Ishmael had rebuilt many centuries before, but which now housed idols. He was troubled by this impulse until Allah directed him to do so. The Ka’aba is now at the centre of Mecca’s mosque complex.

As the verses suggest, Islam is not an entirely separate belief system from the Judeo-Christian tradition. It embraces much from those faiths, and Mohammed referred to himself as the ‘seal of the prophets’, the last of a long line including Moses and Jesus. Abraham represented a supreme example of godly humility because he had submitted to the will of God in offering to sacrifice his son to Him. And ‘Islam’ itself means ‘submission to the will of God’.

INDEED WE SEE THE TURNING OF YOUR FACE TO HEAVEN, so We shall surely turn you to a qiblah [prayer direction] which you shall like; turn then your face towards the Sacred Mosque, and wherever you are, turn your face towards it, and those who have been given the Book [Scriptures, i.e. Jews and Christians] most surely know that it is the truth from their Lord; and Allah is not at all heedless of what they do.

And even if you bring to those who have been given the Book every sign they would not follow your qiblah, nor can you be a follower of their qiblah, neither are they the followers of each other’s qiblah, and if you follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, then you shall most surely be among the unjust.

Those whom We have given the Book recognize him as they recognize their sons, and a party of them most surely conceal the truth while they know (it).

The truth is from your Lord, therefore you should not be of the doubters.

And every one has a direction to which he should turn, therefore hasten to (do) good works; wherever you are, Allah will bring you all together; surely Allah has power over all things.

And from whatsoever place you come forth, turn your face towards the Sacred Mosque; and surely it is the very truth from your Lord, and Allah is not at all heedless of what you do.

And from whatsoever place you come forth, turn your face towards the Sacred Mosque; and wherever you are turn your faces towards it, so that people shall have no accusation against you, except such of them as are unjust; so do not fear them, and fear Me, that I may complete My favour on you and that you may walk on the right course.