Speeches That Changed the World

 

 

Jesus Christ - The Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are the peacemakers" - View: Sermon on the Mount

Abraham Lincoln - The Gettysburg Address "Four score and twenty years ago our father brought forth on this continent a new nation." 19th November 1863. View: Gettysburg Address

Swami Vivekananda - Address to the World Parliament of Religions 1896. A clarion call for religous tolerance and religous harmony. View: Address to the World Parliament of Religions

Emily Pankhurst - Freedom or Death 1913 - Call for Women's suffrage. View: Freedom or Death

Woodrow Wilson - "The World Must be Made safe for democracy" 2nd April 1917. In this speech were the seeds of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations and the ideal of international cooperation

Vladimir I. Lenin - "Power to the Soviets" - September 1917. The Russian revolution and the triumph of Communism over Tsarist Russia

Franklin D. Roosevelt - The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - March 4th 1933 at the height of the Great Depression in America. Roosevelt went on to be president for the next 12 years.

Winston Churchill - "I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, toil and tears" 13th May 1940. On accepting the PM in Britain's darkest hour. Firmly rejecting a deal with Nazi Germany, Churchill resolved to carry on the fight.

Winston Churchill - "We shall Fight them on the Beaches" June 4th 1940. When Great Britain stood alone against the tyranny of the Nazi onslaught.

Charles De Gaulle - "The Flame of French Resistance - June 18th 1940. With French pride humbled from the rapid capitulation to the Nazi invasion. Charles de Gaulle maintained French pride and sowed the seeds of the French resistance movement.

Jawaharlal Nehru -"A tyrst with destiny - A the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awaken to life and Freedom" - August 14th 1947. On the eve of India's historic independence Nehru speaks on the challenges and aspirations of the world's largest democracy.

Nikita Khruschev - "The Cult of the Individual" - December 5th 1956. For decades Stalin's repressions had tyrannised the Soviet Union. Khruschev spoke the unspeakable and implicitly criticised the excesses of the Stalin era.

Harold MacMillan - The Winds of Change - February 3rd 1960. Speaking on South Africa's need to reform its apartheid system.

John F Kennedy - "Ask Not what your country can do for you" - January 20th 1961. The young John F Kennedy offered a new vision for America. His youthful exuberance set the tone for the radical decade of change which epitimised the 1960s

Martin Luther King - "I have a Dream" - August 28th 1963. Martin Luther King's finest moment. A speech that seared into the consciousness of America laying the building blocks for civil rights legislation and a new attitude to race relations. A speech listend to by a million people on the steps of Washington D.C. View: I Have a Dream

Nelson Mandela - "An Idea for which I am prepared to die" April 20th 1964. Mandela sacrificed over 20 years of his life in prison for the ideal of defeating the system of apartheid.

Mother Teresa - "Love Begins at Home" speech on receiving the Nobel Prize in 1979

Mikhail Gorbachev - "Freedom of choice is a universal principle to which there should be no exceptions." Speech to UN General Assembly 7 December 1988.

Nelson Mandela - "Free at Last" Johannesburg 2 May 1994