Voices of History: Speeches That Changed the World

Resistance Boudicca, “This is a woman’s resolve,” AD 61 Elizabeth I, “The heart and stomach of a king,” 8 August 1588John Boyega, “Black lives have always mattered,” 3 June 2020 Eleazar Ben Yair, “Let us die before we become slaves,” AD 73 Winston Churchill, “Blood, toil, tears and sweat,”13 May 1940 Emmeline Pankhurst, “I am here as a soldier,” 13 November 1913   Dreamers Martin Luther King, Jr, “I have a dream,” 28 August 1963 Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a woman?” 1863 version Muhammad Ali, “Wait till you see Muhammad Ali,” 30 October 1974  Freedom Simón Bolívar, “We are not Europeans; we are not Indians; we are but a mixed species,”     15 February 1819 Toussaint Louverture, “I want liberty and equality to reign,” 29 August 1793 Jawaharlal Nehru, “At the stroke of the midnight hour,” 14 August 1947 Nelson Mandela, “Rainbow nation,” 10 May 1994 Winston Churchill, “We shall fight on the beaches,” 4 June 1940   Rise and Fall Muawiyah, “When they pull, I loosen,” 7th century AD Elizabeth I, “I have reigned with your loves,” 30 November 1601 Winston Churchill, “This was their finest hour,” 18 June 1940 Barack Obama, “America is a place where all things are possible,” 4 November 2008   Decency Abraham Lincoln, “Until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with     the sword,” 4 March 1865 John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you,” 20 January 1961 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The ability of human beings to make and remake themselves for the      better,” December 2012 Malala Yousafzai, “One pen and one book can change the world,” 12 July 2013 Mohandas Gandhi, “I have faith in the righteousness of our cause,” 11 March 1930 Susan B. Anthony, “Are women persons?” February–June 1873Elizabeth II, “We will be with our friends; we will be with our families; we will meet again,” 5 April      2020   Battlefields George S. Patton, Jr, “I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging sonofabitch Hitler,” 5    June 1944 Alexander the Great, “You have Alexander,” November 333 BC George W. Bush, “Today, our nation saw evil,” 11 September 2001 Tim Collins, “Tread lightly there,” 19 March 2003 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “A date which will live in infamy,” 8 December 1941   Defiance Cleopatra, “I will not be triumphed over,” 30 BC Oliver Cromwell, “In the name of God, go!” 20 April 1653 Ronald Reagan, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” 12 June 1987 Winston Churchill, “The Few,” 20 August 1940   TerrorAl-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, “By God I’ll grind you down to dust,” Kufa, Iraq, AD 694 Nikolai Yezhov, Josef Stalin and others, “These swine must be strangled,” 4 December 1936 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “Declare the Caliphate,” 29 June 2014 Genghis Khan, “The greatest pleasure,” 13th century Osama bin Laden, “America is struck,” 7 October 2001 Maximilien Robespierre, “Virtue and terror,” 5 February 1794   Trials Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” 399 BC Nikolai Yezhov, “Shoot me quietly,” 3 February 1940   Follies Richard Nixon, “No whitewash at the White House,” 30 April 1973 Neville Chamberlain, “Peace for our time,” 30 September 1938 Adolf Hitler, “I am at the head of the strongest army in the world,” 11 December 1941   Power Theodora, “Imperial purple is the noblest burial sheet,” AD 532 Josef Stalin, “We need new blood,” 16 October 1952 Abraham Lincoln, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people,” 19 November 1863 Donald Trump, “Make America great again,” 16 June 2015 Aung San Suu Kyi, “It is not power that corrupts, but fear,” July 1991 Xi Jinping, “History is our best teacher,” 14 May 2017Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,”     7 November 2020   Peacemakers Anwar al-Sadat, “I have come to Jerusalem, as the City of Peace,” 20 November 1977 Yitzhak Rabin, “Enough of blood and tears,” 13 September 1993   Revolution Georges Danton, “Dare, dare again, always dare!” 2 September 1792 Mao Zedong, “The Chinese people have stood up!” 21 September 1949 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Power to the Soviets,” September 1917 Ruhollah Khomeini, “I shall smash this government in the teeth,” February 1979   Warmongers Urban II, “Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre,” 27 November 1095 Cato the Elder, “Carthage must be destroyed!” 149 BC Genocide Adolf Hitler, “The annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe,” 30 January 1939 Heinrich Himmler, “The Jewish people are going to be exterminated,” 4 October 1943   Good vs Evil Elie Wiesel, “The perils of indifference,” 12 April 1999 Boris Yeltsin, “We are all guilty,” 18 July 1998 Chaim Herzog, “Hate, ignorance and evil,” 10 November 1975   Prophets Moses, “Thou shall not kill,” Exodus 20, Verses 1–26 Jesus of Nazareth, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” 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 (“The Cow”), Verse 2 (144–50), 7th century AD   Warnings J. Robert Oppenheimer, “We are not only scientists; we are men, too,” 2 November 1945 Greta Thunberg, “We can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis,” 3 December 2018   Goodbyes Eva Perón, “Remain faithful to Perón,” 17 October 1951 Martin Luther King, Jr, “I’ve seen the promised land,” 3 April 1968Attila the Hun, funeral address by his henchman, “Lord of the bravest tribes . . . fell neither by an    enemy’s blow nor by treachery, but . . . rejoicing,” AD 453 Richard Nixon, “Nobody will ever write a book about my mother,” 9 August 1974 William Pitt the Younger, “Europe is not to be saved by any single man,” 9 November 1805 Nero, “What an artist the world is losing in me,” 9 June 68 AD Barack Obama, “We do these things because of who we are,” 1 May 2011 Napoleon Bonaparte, “Soldiers of my Old Guard: I bid you farewell,” 20 April 1814Edward VIII, “The woman I love,” 11 December 1936 Alexander the Great, “Depart!” August 324 BC Charles I, “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown,” 30 January 1649 Ronald Reagan, “Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue,” 28 January 1986