Speeches that Changed our Times

03/05/1946 • Winston Churchill “An iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

08/10/1946 • Alcide De Gasperi Italian Premier Alcide De Gasperi’s speech

08/14/1947 • Jawaharlal Nehru

• David Ben-Gurion

12/09/1948 • Eleanor Roosevelt An appeal for the adoption of the Universal Declaration

05/01/1952 • Evita Perón The rallying cry for the descamisados to defend

06/02/1953 • Elizabeth II Speech given at her coronation ceremony 58

02/25/1956 • Nikita Khrushchev

Secret speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality and his crimes against the people 68

02/27/1957 • Mao Zedong

Speech about the correct handling of the contradictions among the Chinese people during the Hundred Flowers Campaign 74

01/20/1961 • John F. Kennedy Inaugural address as President of the United States of America 80

11/10/1962 • Pope John XXIII

Address on the occasion of the opening of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican 86

08/28/1963 • Martin Luther King, Jr. “I have a dream” 90

04/03/1964 • Malcolm X

The ballot or the bullet: a speech about voting rights and armed revolution 96

04/20/1964 • Nelson Mandela “I am prepared to die”: his defense speech at the Rivonia trial 102

12/11/1964 • Ernesto “Che” Guevara Speech delivered to the General Assembly of the United Nations 108

09/11/1973 • Salvador Allende

Farewell speech on the day of Pinochet’s coup d’état 114

12/10/1979 • Mother Teresa

Acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize 118

10/04/1984 • Thomas Sankara

Speech delivered to the General Assembly of the United Nations 124

05/08/1985 • Richard von Weizsäcker

Speech delivered during the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II 130

06/12/1987 • Ronald Reagan

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!” 136

12/07/1988 • Mikhail Gorbachev

Address at the General Assembly of the United Nations regarding the reforms implemented in the Soviet Union 142

09/04/1995 • Benazir Bhutto

Address to the Fourth World Conference on Women 148

04/12/1999 • Elie Wiesel

Speech about the perils of indifference to the tragedies of the twentieth century 154

11/27/1999 • Anita Roddick

Address to the International Forum on Globalization 160

01/11/2002 • Stephen Hawking

Speech at his sixtieth birthday symposium at the University of Cambridge 164

05/22/2008 • Dalai Lama Conference at the Royal Albert Hall during his visit to the UK 170

11/04/2008 • Barack Obama

Victory speech after being elected President of the United States 176

03/19/2013 • Pope Francis “We must not be afraid of goodness or even tenderness!” 182

05/11/2013 • George Saunders

Commencement address to the students of Syracuse University 188

07/12/2013 • Malala Yousafzai

Speech delivered at the United Nations Youth Assembly 194

01/07/2018 • Oprah Winfrey

Acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes 200

09/10/2018 • António Guterres

Speech about climate change delivered by the Secretary-General of the United Nations 206

05/04/2020 • Elisabetta II

Speech at the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic 212

14/09/2022 • Ursula von der Leyen State of the Union Address 216 About the author

222

Charles de Gaulle Announcement of the end of World War II in a broadcast speech

Paris, May 8, 1945

May 8, 1945 marked the end of World War II in Europe. The date was a dividing line between a period of massacres and genocide and one of hope for a return to civilized life and cohabitation. Adolf Hitler had taken his own life on April 30 and, orphaned of her Führer, Germany had had no choice but to sign an unconditional surrender, placing the future of the country and her people in the hands of the Allies.

Two men embody the spirit of the resistance during the darkest hours of modern Europe’s history: Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. Charles de Gaulle was born to a Catholic, nationalist family; on June 3, 1944 he became the president of the Provisional Government of the French Republic. His speech to the nation on May 8, 1945, broadcast in the early afternoon following the German surrender, was but the last in a long series. There would have been no May 8 for France had it not been for the plea of the June 18, 1940 broadcast from Radio London—a vehement call to arms addressed to the French people, urging them not to lose hope and to fight the German invader. That was the day the Resistance movement against the Vichy government, a Third Reich satellite state that occupied the south-central portion of France, was born.

The beginning of his speech—“The war has been won!”— was delivered in a relieved, liberating tone after long years of suffering. Throughout the entire war, de Gaulle, in full dress uniform, embodied the image of a nation that remained free and combative. In fact, for France, maintaining its honor and pride before its allies and before the world was just as important as preserving its economic, political, and colonial interests. It was de Gaulle, the strongest advocate and representative of French grandeur , who exclaimed in 1941: “There is a 2,000-year-old pact between the greatness of France and freedom in the world.” He was a master of communications. His use of cutting and ironic language was unconventional for a politician and endeared him to his people, who believed him and had faith in him. His imposing carriage, his perfectly combed hair, and his Roman nose made him an easily recognizable figure, an icon of the times. As the head of the military and the father of the nation, de Gaulle announced the end of the war and France’s victory. He honored the French and Allied soldiers and civilians who fought in order to prevent Europe and the entire world from falling under Nazi domination.

On June 3, 1944, as the head of the French Committee of National Liberation, Charles de Gaulle became president of the Provisional Government of France.

Ho Chi Minh Declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam

Hanoi, September 2, 1945

On September 2, 1945, in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh spoke before hundreds of thousands of people—the entire population of Vietnam, a population who harbored a strong sense of freedom. On that stage, pronouncing the word “independence” was essentially a declaration of the birth of a new country, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. During World War II, which ended on that day, September 2, six years after it had begun, the French colony of Vietnam had fallen under Japanese domain, like much of Asia. In 1941, Ho Chi Minh founded the Viet Minh League for the Independence of Vietnam to fight the invaders, and instituted a provisional government to implement social reforms.

Japan’s surrender—a few days after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—changed the geopolitical situation in the region. Across Vietnam, thousands of people took to the streets to demand independence. French politics stood at a crossroads. They could return to colonial dominion and enter into a war to reconquer the territories they had lost, or they could accept the request for emancipation. No one in Paris was willing to give up the territories in Indochina. More than once, Ho Chi Minh wrote to the American president, Harry Truman, who had spoken favorably of the self-determination of

nations. In his communications, he denounced the revanchist aims of French colonialism and openly asked for help in the fight for independence. But since the United States feared a possible Soviet influence in the area, they decided to aid France. After a few feeble attempts to avoid military conflict with diplomacy, the War of Indochina broke out. In 1954, after hundreds of thousands of deaths, General Giap, the able military strategist who led the Viet Minh fighters, finally defeated the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu.

The war against the United States was a new chapter in the fight for national sovereignty. Ho Chi Minh died before the end of the conflict. With his death, Vietnam lost the man who had led the country to independence in 1954, the man who had resisted the American army, and the man who had dedicated his entire life to the liberation of his country. At twenty years old, he had left his country to go to Europe and live in Paris and in London and, later, to the United States. So it was that his political education began, between one temporary job and another, and it continued when he went to Moscow and China. In all, he was far from his people and his homeland for thirty years before he returned to free them.

A close-up of the North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, in 1965.

Albert Einstein Address at the Fifth Nobel Anniversary Dinner

New York, December 10, 1945

On December 10, 1945, under the light of the sumptuous chandeliers of the Astor Hotel in New York, a dinner was held to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel. Albert Einstein took the opportunity to reiterate the responsibility and duty that lay on the shoulders of all physicists and scientists in regard to the fate of our planet. It was 1945.

World War II had just ended, but the sixty-six-year-old Nobel Prize winner for Physics was not seeing real signs of a stable and lasting peace among world powers, who were still untrusting and fearful of the horrors of conflict. He called for the establishment of a worldwide supranational authority to whom governments would delegate part of their sovereignty and who would safeguard the secrets of the atomic bomb in order to guarantee “security, peace, and wellbeing for all of humanity.” Einstein called himself a pacifist, but he was certainly not naive. He knew all too well the nature of man and his intrinsic aggressiveness. In fact, in his correspondence with Sigmund Freud he wrote: “So long as there are men, there will be wars.” Over the years, he tried to free himself of the mistaken labels ascribed to him.

His critical attitude led the FBI to open a file of over 1,500 pages regarding his activities. They feared he might have been affiliated with the Communist movement and have pro-Soviet Union leanings; but, in reality, that fear was never realized.

It was in the name of peace that, in 1939, Einstein and his Hungarian colleague, Leo Szilard, wrote to the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to warn him about the possibility that Nazi Germany was working on the creation of a nuclear fission bomb. But it was not that letter that prompted the president to create the Manhattan Project, nor was Einstein invited to participate in it. The aim of the scientists in the project was to intensify studies and research regarding uranium—and, ultimately, they produced an atomic bomb. Einstein also failed to prevent the United States from dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; an act of cruel revenge against Japan in a war that was already drawing to a close.

However, Albert Einstein’s moral commitment was still strong. In 1955, before he died, his final act was to co-sign what would become the Russell-Einstein Manifesto with Bertrand Russell, the prominent British mathematician and philosopher. The manifesto was an invitation to discuss the dangers that weapons of mass destruction posed for humanity. It was a seed that would sprout at the Pugwash Conference for Science and World Affairs, a non-governmental organization, which was founded in 1957 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

Not all of Einstein’s pacifistic efforts had been in vain.

The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, during a conference at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, on January 17, 1931.

Alcide De Gasperi Italian Premier

Paris, August 10, 1946

For the countries who won World War II, Italy was seen more as a defeated enemy than as an ally; a country who had changed sides during the conflict, pulling out of its alliance with Hitler’s Germany only after the defeat of Mussolini on July 25, 1943 and the subsequent armistice with the Allies. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, the task of Alcide De Gasperi, the first president of the Council of Ministers of the newly formed Italian Republic, was to convince them of the contrary, despite the climate of suspicion and hostility that reigned. In fact, his first words were “I feel that everything—except your personal courtesy—is against me.” And he, who had personally suffered the oppression of the regime, was the best man for such a delicate assignment.

Italy’s national borders, established before Mussolini’s rise to power, were being challenged. The country was forced to give up its colonies in Africa, as well as Albania and the Dodecanese Islands. Moreover, and above all, there was the failure to retain Trieste within the Italian border. The Allies divided the city into two zones: one was placed under the protection of an Allied military government, and the other was temporarily controlled by Yugoslavia. Only eight years later, in 1954, would the area officially

Alcide De Gasperi’s speech to the Paris Peace Conference

return to within Italy’s national border. The country was also called upon to make reparations, monetary compensation for damages caused during the war. The economic situation was critical, and much of Italy needed to be rebuilt following the Allied bombings and the armed conflicts that preceded the Liberation. It had been eighteen long months during which the soldiers of the Reich had destroyed everything along their path as they slowly retreated northward.

For Italy, the conditions of the peace treaty were oppressive. De Gasperi underlined the decisive role that Italian partisans and soldiers had played in the final defeat of Germany. He also insisted upon the need for the international community’s trust and support for the newly formed Republic whose anti-fascist constitution would be approved in the months to follow. He asserted that punitive measures would serve no purpose, that they would be no more than unjust provisions based on prejudice and near-sightedness that would harm “a hard-working population of 47 million people.” The delegates listened to his fervent appeal with interest and, indeed, “courtesy”; but, ultimately, they were still cold and even indifferent.

David Ben-Gurion

Jerusalem, October 2, 1947

Statement regarding the right of the Jewish people to establish a nation

There are moments in history when a man assumes responsibility for the fate of a population, to the point of forging his own character with the wishes and expectations, the hopes and dreams of the millions of people who recognize him as their leader and guide. Ben-Gurion was born in Płonsk, Poland. Before he turned twenty, he went to Palestine, already aware that his entire life would be dedicated to leading Israel to freedom and to the creation of a new sovereign state. Exile, persecution, two world wars, and the holocaust—none of these could weaken his intentions. Quite the opposite: they all served to strengthen his desire to finally give a home to his people. On October 2, 1947, in front of the elected assembly of Palestinian Jews in Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion spoke as the father of his country. With a steady voice, forged by years of dedication and activism, the Israeli leader displayed all of his pragmatism. Declaring to the world that the Jewish people were finally the proud, conscious masters of their own fate, he forever destroyed the stereotypical image of the continuously wandering Jew who passively endured history. He gave his speech in the complex political context that had marked the history of the Holy Land for decades. Three exponents

played a primary role in the situation: the United Kingdom, who had been entrusted with the administration of the territory since 1920 with the Mandate for Palestine; the Zionist institutions, who considered the Mandate and the British laws that regulated Jewish immigration in Palestine to be obstacles to Jewish independence in the region; and the Arab countries that firmly opposed the foundation of a Jewish state. At the end of World War II, the survivors of the Shoah asked to move to Palestine, a move that the United Kingdom opposed. Ultimately, the harsh Zionist reaction forced the British government to put the Mandate into the hands of the newly formed United Nations, who decided to partition the country between Jews and Arabs. In his speech, Ben-Gurion listed the three key elements, in order of importance, that would determine the destiny of the Jewish people and the conditions necessary for their survival: defense; the creation of a Jewish State; and cohabitation between Israelis and Arabs. He maintained that “Each one needs the other and each one completes the other.” It was a call for close collaboration between Jews and Arabs that put forth an impressive number of hopes and resolutions, all of which would eventually be betrayed by both parts for different reasons.

The leader of the World Zionist Organization, David Ben-Gurion, as he announces the establishment of the State of Israel. He was the country’s prime minister from 1948 to 1963.

Evita Perón

Buenos Aires, May 1, 1952

In what was to be her final speech, Evita Perón pronounced the word pueblo, the people or the population, twenty times in eleven minutes. The population of women, of men, of workers, of the disowned, the Argentinian people, the people of the world. In simplistic terms, it is what has reappeared in today’s political arena—“populism.” A phenomenon that comes and goes and comes back again in waves and for which Evita was a great advocate. She was much more than the wife of the general and much more than the smiling face of the regime. Rather, she was its icon, from her humble family background to her youth as a girl, seeking her fortune, to her premature, theatricalized death.

Her life seems like a Hollywood movie in which even the last of the disowned can become part of high society. One needs to have ambition, good luck, and extraordinary willpower, as well as a number of other qualities that may or may not be considered positive. But ultimately, the illegitimate daughter of a cook from the Argentinian countryside became Evita, the most powerful, most exalted, and best-loved woman in the country. It was almost as if that path had been created for her and just for her. It goes without saying that Evita was a complicated figure. She was articulate, out-of-the-ordinary, and mysterious in her own way. Perhaps she was sincere, and she was undoubtedly

The rallying cry for the descamisados to defend Perón

disputable. And disputed. Her charisma fascinated factory workers and dockworkers in the port of Buenos Aires who followed her activities with enthusiasm, but she also captivated the leaders of the world—even the Pope, whom she met during her long trip to Europe.

In Plaza de Mayo on that first day of May, Worker’s Day, that charisma was palpable in the words she spoke. The square was packed with descamisados, the backbone of government support, and she urged them to defend Perón, physically if necessary, from his treacherous enemies both at home and abroad. She invoked God; she compared herself to the weakest members of the population as one who understands their suffering and hopes; she, who was able to gain her freedom and realize her dreams.

Those who listened valued her dedication and self-sacrifice. She was already ill and had been warned against making public appearances, but she was stubborn and fearless and wanted to say good-bye to her people for the last time. Two months later, her condition worsened and she was confined to a hospital bed, where she fell into a coma before dying. The long line of people who came to pay their respects at the burial chamber where her body was on display wound through the streets of Buenos Aires for more than a mile.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963

“I have a dream”

On a hot day in August 1963, more than 250,000 people from every corner of the United States converged on Washington to take part in the March for Jobs and Freedom, the largest rally for civil rights in American history. The African American community marched along the mile between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, hoping it would be the last leg of the long, hard road that would lead to the recognition of their dignity. Slavery had been abolished a century earlier; but another, equally hateful form of racism and discrimination had quickly taken hold across the country: racial segregation.

After the dramatic clashes between police and protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, a few months earlier, tensions were running high and the deployment of law-enforcement agents was powerful. But from the first moments of the march, it was clear that that August 28 would be remembered as a great day for a movement that had made nonviolence its emblem, a day in which there would be no incidents or clashes. At the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, under the gaze of the president who had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that declared the freedom of millions of slaves, speakers and performers took turns at the microphone; the gospel legend Mahalia Jackson; Joan Baez, who sang We Shall Overcome; and a young Bob Dylan. But the audience was waiting for the last speaker to take the podium. He was the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the man who, more than any other, could give a voice and hope for a better future to the millions of African Americans that were being forced to live on the edge of society. The reverend’s intense passion and his inspired words shaped what would become one of the most riveting messages of peace, love, and equality in the history of the world. He spoke of his “dream” of a more equitable society, based on principles that are rooted in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States of America, but that seem to have been forgotten by so many citizens and politicians. Television brought Martin Luther King’s speech into the homes of millions of Americans, rattling the conscience of many of them. The approval of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 established the end of segregation and the beginning of a new era for the African American community and for the entire country.

Thomas Sankara

New York, October 4, 1984

When the president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, got up to speak to the General Assembly of the United Nations, very little was known about him or the country he came from. He was a man about thirty years old in a military uniform who delivered his speech in French; but where was Burkina Faso, exactly? Until just a few months earlier, it had been known as Upper Volta, a landlocked strip of earth bordering on the Sahara desert, swept by a dry wind many months of the year. Sankara began by saying that after more than twenty years of independence that had brought them nothing, the people there no longer intended to die of hunger and thirst. Foreign aid made no actual contribution to development, and the models proposed by “charlatan” development specialists did not work and had to be abandoned. It was time for change, change that was possible even in Burkina Faso’s desperate situation, where one child in five did not reach the age of one and only two percent of the population could read and write; where few had access to drinkable water, and having two meals a day was considered a luxury. Sankara spoke of restraint, austerity, and moral integrity. At the same time, he expressed his solidarity with the populations of other countries who were enduring the same suffering and were also seeing their

Speech delivered to the General Assembly of the United Nations

basic rights be trampled for the economic gain of just a few.

The initial measures to be adopted were simple and necessary: to send children to school and vaccinate them so they did not die of measles; to overcome the feudal system that was still enforced in the countryside; to eliminate the tangle of privileges of many state officials; and to build houses for those who lived in miserable shacks on the edge of the cities. With pride and hope, Burkina Faso looked out on a world that was dominated by two great opposing powers. Struggling on the fringes were the Third-World Countries: lands that had been there for the taking. Lands that were plundered and pillaged without remorse by the powerful, who allocated great sums of money to build weapons, the instruments of death used to appropriate raw materials that were needed by the Western societies.

Sankara was killed three years later. He was disliked by many, not only in Africa. He was becoming an inspiration for Africa’s new generations, and his condemnation of the hypocrisy and arrogance of the powerful in the world had become intolerable to them. The essence of his philosophy called for the creation of a “world with more justice and no wars,” but it would have to wait. Who knows for how long?

The president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, during the visit of the French president, François Mitterrand, on November 18, 1986 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Elie Wiesel

Washington, D.C., April 12, 1999

When Elie Wiesel took the stage on April 12, 1999, as part of the Millennium Lecture Series held at the White House, the culprit he pointed his finger at was indifference. When the first lady, Hillary Clinton, introduced him, she thanked him for teaching the world to “never forget.” Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, he narrated his dramatic experience as a survivor of the Shoah. His words were full of recognition for the United States, who had helped end the horror with the sacrifice of many lives, but they were also full of indignation for those who knew and did nothing to save millions of people. How could anyone have remained impassive and, indeed, indifferent in the face of such horrible atrocities? His entire life had been marked by his infancy. When he was born in 1928 in Sighet, the small town was part of Romania; then, during the war, it fell under Hungarian rule. On May 6, 1944, from one of the ghettos established there by the Germans, the Wiesel family was deported to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. On the tracks of the train that had transported them, Elie embraced his mother and his sister, Tzipora, for the last time. From that time on, he was A-7713, the number that the Nazis had

Speech about the perils of indifference to the tragedies of the twentieth century

tattooed on his arm. He and his father were sent to the Buna work camp and then to Buchenwald, where he watched as his father was beaten to death in January 1945, only a few weeks before the first American soldiers arrived. He was sixteen.

It would take time before he would be able to talk about the events that had scarred him, but he finally did that in his first book, an autobiographical novel, Night, published in 1959. Initially, as he worked as a journalist in Paris, he tried to forget the horrors he had seen and experienced; then he decided to put his writing at the service of the community, to help resolve humanitarian issues.

Despite the negative events that had scarred the twentieth century, Wiesel underlined the positive ones, including the downfall of dictatorships, the signing of peace agreements, and particularly the intervention of the United States and NATO in Kosovo, against the atrocities perpetrated by Slobodan Miloševic’s Yugoslavian Army. This direct action in the field was a signal of hope, the collapse of that indifference that had repeatedly marked the century that was coming to an end.

The Romanian-born, French-speaking American writer, Elie Wiesel, in August 1996, in Paris.

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Translation: Iceigeo, Milan (translation: Cynthia Anne Koeppe; editing: Katherine Clifton) Final editing: Phillip Gaskill

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