50 Speeches That Made the Modern World: Famous Speeches from Women's Rights to Human Rights

by Chambers

Overview

Throughout history, great speeches have produced great change. From inciting violence and asserting control to restoring peace and securing freedom, nothing has the raw emotional power of a speech delivered at the right moment, in the right place, with the right content, and the right delivery.

50 Speeches That Made The Modern World is a celebration of the most influential and thought-provoking speeches that have shaped the world we live in. With comprehensive, chronological coverage of speeches from the 20th and 21st centuries, taken from all corners of the globe, it covers Emmeline Pankhurst's patiently reasoned condemnation of men's failure to improve ordinary women's lives in 1908 through speeches by Vladimir Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi, David Ben-Gurion, Albert Einstein, Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Benazir Bhutto, Osama Bin Laden and Aung San Suu Kyi, right up to the most compelling oratory surrounding the 2016 US Presidential elections.

Through the rallying propaganda speeches during World War II to the cautious rhetoric of the Cold War period, through challenging the status quo on issues of race, gender and politics to public addresses to the masses on the issues of AIDS and terrorism, through apologies, complaints, warmongering, scaremongering and passionate pleas, this book delivers the most important speeches of the modern era and why they still remain so significant.

Each speech has an introduction explaining its setting, importance and impact as well as marginal notes filling in any background information.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781473640948
Publisher:	Mobius
Publication date:	11/07/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Andrew Burnet is an Edinburgh based journalist and freelance writer and editor. He has compiled and edited two editions of The Chambers Book of Great Speeches.

Table of Contents

Introduction viii

1 'The laws that men have made' (24 March 1908) Emmeline Pankhurst 3

2 'To the workers, everything; to the toilers, everything!' (30 August 1918) Vladimir Ilich Lenin 9

3 'Why do we want to offer this non-cooperation?' (12 August 1920) Mahatma Gandhi 13

4 'We must win the peace' (25 June 1923) Benito Mussolini 18

5 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself' (4 March 1933) Franklin D Roosevelt 22

6 'They shall not pass!' (19 July 1936) La Pasionaria 28

7 'I lay down my burden' (11 December 1936) Edward VIII 32

8 'This country is now at war with Germany' (3 September 1939) Neville Chamberlain 35

9 'We shall fight on the beaches' (4 June 1940) Winston Churchill 38

10 'The issue is one of life and death for the Soviet state' (3 July 1941) Joseph Stalin 44

11 'Let the storm break loose' (18 February 1943) Joseph Goebbels 48

12 'I am talking about … the extermination of the Jewish people' (4 October 1943) Heinrich Himmler 52

13 'Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated!' (25 August 1944) Charles de Gaulle 56

14 'Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country' (2 September 1945) Ho Chi Minn 58

15 'We dedicate today this Road of Valour' (12 December 1948) David Ben-Gurion 62

16 'Security through national armament is … a disastrous illusion' (19 February 1950) Albert Einstein 67

17 'The cult of the individual and its harmful consequences' (25 February 1956) Nikita Khrushchev 71

18 'This is a time for action' (2 November 1956) Anthony Eden 78

19 'Without recognition of human rights we shall never have peace' (10 April 1957) Dag Hammarskjöld 83

20 'Most of our people have never had it so good' (20 July 1957) Harold Macmillan 88

21 'An honest, loyal, strong, popular government' (23 June 1960) Patrice Lumumba 93

22 'To be a revolutionary you have first to have a revolution' (19 August 1960) Ernesto 'Che' Guevara 97

23 'Ich bin ein Berliner' (26 June 1963) John F Kennedy 103

24 'I have a dream' (28 August 1963) Martin Luther King 107

25 'The ballot or the bullet' (3 April 1964) Malcolm X 113

26 'Hostility between the sexes has never been worse' (January 1969) Betty Friedan 119

27 'A Europe which is free, democratic, safe and happy' (2 January 1973) Edward Heath 124

28 'There can be no whitewash at the White House' (30 April 1973) Richard M Nixon 129

29 'I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun' (13 November 1974) Yasser Arafat 135

30 'The lady's not for turning' (10 October 1980) Margaret Thatcher 142

31 'The aggressive impulses of an evil empire' (8 March 1983) Ronald Reagan 147

32 'Apartheid's final solution' (11 December 1984) Desmond Tutu 151

33 'Tear down this wall!' (12 June 1987) Ronald Reagan 158

34 'We live in a contaminated moral environment' (1 January 1990) Václav Havel 164

35 'On this day of my release' (11 February 1990) Nelson Mandela 169

36 'AIDS virus is not a political creature' (19 August 1992) Mary Fisher 175

37 'It has turned out to be an annus horribilis' (24 November 1992) Elizabeth II 179

38 'The ethos of Islam is equality, equality between the sexes' (4 September 1995) Benazir Bhutto 183

39 'I have sinned' (11 September 1998) Bill Clinton 187

40 'Today, our nation saw evil' (11 September 2001) George W Bush 191

41 'Iraq will be victorious' (20 March 2003) Saddam Hussein 194

42 'Our acts are reaction to your own acts' (15 April 2004) Osama bin Laden 197

43 'You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart' (12 June 2005) Steve Jobs 200

44 'Heroism is here, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens' (12 January 2011) Barack Obama 206

45 'My country today stands at the start of a journey' (21 June 2012) Aung San Suu Kyi 213

46 'They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed' (12 July 2013) Malala Yousafzai 220

47 'Reducing excessive inequality is not just morally and politically correct, but it is good economics' (17 June 2015) Christine Lagarde 226

48 'We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road' (2 December 2015) Hilary Benn 234

49 'You voted for our tomorrow to be better than our yesterday' (15 March 2016) Hillary Clinton 239

50 'As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world' (13 July 2016) Theresa May 244

Acknowledgements 247

Sources 248