Steve Jobs gives his commencement address at Stanford university in 2005.
In 12 June, 2005, a year after he was first diagnosed with cancer, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a candid speech to graduating students at Stanford University. Read the rest of this entry »
Nobel Lecture, Oslo, December 10, 2004
Prof. Wangari Maathai Nobel Lecture
Majesties
Your Royal Highnesses
Honourable Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen
I stand before you and the world humbled by this recognition and uplifted by the honour of being the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate. Read the rest of this entry »
Inaugural Address speech by Nelson Mandela
May 10th 1994
Your Majesties, Your Highnesses, Distinguished Guests, Comrades and friends:
Today, all of us do, by our presence here, and by our celebrations in other parts of our country and the world, confer glory and hope to newborn liberty.
Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud. Read the rest of this entry »
Nelson Mandela – “I am Prepared to Die”
April 20, 1964
I am the First Accused.
I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts and practised as an attorney in Johannesburg for a number of years in partnership with Oliver Tambo. I am a convicted prisoner serving five years for leaving the country without a permit and for inciting people to go on strike at the end of May 1961. Read the rest of this entry »
Martin Luther King Jr
Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered what is regarded today as one of the greatest speeches in American history. Read the rest of this entry »
John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, at the height of Cold War tensions. The speech set the tone for the foreign-policy activism of the youngest president elected in the United States. President Kennedy reached out to the world’s newly developing countries, which at the time were being courted by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the People’s Republic of China. Kennedy’s message foreshadowed such programs as the Alliance for Progress and the far more successful Peace Corps. Herbert S. Parmet
German dictator Adolf Hitler often worked himself and his audiences to a fever pitch of emotion during his orations. By September 26, 1938, when he gave this speech, Germany had annexed Austria and laid claim to the area of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland, where many ethnic Germans lived. Hitler insisted in this speech that aside from Sudetenland, he had no “territorial problem” in Europe. On September 29, Britain, France, and Italy signed the Munich Pact with Germany, allowing the Sudetenland to be ceded to Germany. Read the rest of this entry »
Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is the last article of my faith. But I had to make my choice. I had either to submit to a system which I considered has done an irreparable harm to my country or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth when they understood the truth from my lips. I know that my people have sometimes gone mad. I am deeply sorry for it; and I am therefore, here, to submit not to a light penalty but to the highest penalty. I do not ask for mercy. I do not plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. Read the rest of this entry »
On July 26, 1953, Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro led approximately 180 young men in an attack on the Moncada military fortress in Santiago de Cuba. This assault on the political leadership of dictator Fulgencio Batista ended in Castro’s capture and imprisonment. At his trial Castro acted as his own attorney and gave the following speech in his defense. Batista granted him amnesty in 1955, and Castro went into exile in Mexico. In 1956 he returned to Cuba with a small group of guerrillas, calling themselves the 26th of July Movement. Their revolution eventually triumphed in 1959.
United States President Bill Clinton delivered his first inaugural address on January 20, 1993. Clinton was the first president from the Democratic Party to be elected since 1976. In his speech, Clinton emphasizes that the United States must work in order to keep up with and benefit from continuing social and economic change. In his opening phrase “we force the spring,” Clinton summarizes his call for national renewal and rebirth. Among the specific issues he touches on are community service, economic inequality in the United States, and the globalization of trade and foreign policy. Read the rest of this entry »
Greek philosopher Socrates chose to die rather than cease teaching his philosophy, declaring that “no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.” In 399 bc Socrates was accused and convicted of impiety and moral corruption of the youth of Athens, Greece. At his trial, he presented a justification of his life. The substance of his speech was recorded by Greek philosopher Plato, a disciple of Socrates, in Plato’s Apology.
Woodrow Wilson Speech – Peace Without Victory
January 22, 1917
Before the United States entered World War I (1914-1918), President Woodrow Wilson tried to serve as a peacemaker between the Allies and the Central Powers. In a January 22, 1917 speech before the U.S. Senate, he called for a “peace without victory.” Many people scoffed at what they considered Wilson’s idealism. His proposals, however, foreshadowed international collaborations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN). His ideas also formed the basis for the concept of a “new world order” that President George Bush developed at the close of the Cold War in the 1980s. Read the rest of this entry »