Great Speeches of Our Time

1. It is, indeed, hard for the strong to be just to the weak' 16 May 1945 / Eamon de Valera
2. `An iron curtain has descended across the Continent' 5 March 1946 / Winston Churchill
3. `Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos' 5 June 1947 / George Marshall
4. `A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east' 14 August 1947 / Jawaharlal Nehru
5. `This is our native land, it is not as birds of passage that we return to it' 2 October 1947 / David Ben-Gurion
6. `The basic problem confronting the world today ... is the preservation of human freedom' 9 December 1948 / Eleanor Roosevelt
7. `Old soldiers never die, they just fade away' 19 April 1951 / Douglas MacArthur
8. `The cult of the individual brought about rude violation of party democracy' 25 February 1956 / Nikita Khrushchev
9. Contents note continued: `The government resorted to epic weapons for squalid and trivial ends' 5 December 1956 / Aneurin Bevan
10. `Let a hundred flowers blossom. Let a hundred schools of thought contend' 27 February 1957 / Mao Zedong
11. `The wind of change is blowing through this continent' 3 February 1960 / Harold Macmillan
12. `We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier' 15 July 1960 / John F. Kennedy
13. `Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country' 20 January 1961 / John F. Kennedy
14. `Mankind must put an end to war
15. or war will put an end to mankind' 25 September 1961 / John F. Kennedy
16. `There is no independence imaginable for a country that does not have its own nuclear weapon' 15 February 1963 / Charles de Gaulle
17. `I have a dream' 28 August 1963 / Martin Luther King, Jr.
18. `The white heat of the technological revolution' 1 October 1963 / Harold Wilson
19. `An ideal for which I am prepared to die' 20 April 1964 / Nelson Mandela
20. Contents note continued: `Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice ... moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue' 16 July 1964 / Barry Goldwater
21. `The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of afar deeper malady within the American spirit' 4 April 1967 / Martin Luther King, Jr.
22. `Socialism is an attitude of mind' 10 April 1967 / Julius Nyerere
23. `We are determined that the Palestine question will not be liquidated or forgotten' 26 May 1967 / Gamal Abdel Nasser
24. `We are now ready to deal with the entire Palestine question' 29 May 1967 / Gamal Abdel Nasser
25. `North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that' 3 November 1969 / Richard Nixon
26. `Mistakes, yes. But for personal gain, never' 9 August 1974 / Richard Nixon
27. `The bringing home of our constitution marks the end of a long winter' 17 April 1982 / Pierre Trudeau
28. `I warn you that you will have pain' 7 June 1983 / Neil Kinnock
29. Contents note continued: `We are democratic socialists. We care all the time' 15 May 1987 / Neil Kinnock
30. `Isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments' 6 June 1984 / Ronald Reagan
31. `For the love of God: Please, make this nation remember how futures are built' 16 July 1984 / Mario Cuomo
32. `Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint' 18 July 1984 / Jesse Jackson
33. `Anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present' 8 May 1985 / Richard von Weizsacker
34. `Let Europe be a family of nations ... relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour' 20 September 1988 / Margaret Thatcher
35. `Freedom of choice is a universal principle to which there should be no exceptions' 7 December 1988 / Mikhail Gorbachev
36. `A rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world' 10 May 1994 / Nelson Mandela
37. Contents note continued: `The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine' 7 December 1995 / Seamus Heaney
38. `Socialism or death!' 1 January 1999 / Fidel Castro
39. `By putting our money where our heart is ... we will mould the world into a kinder, more loving shape' 27 November 1999 / Anita Roddick
40. `Our policies only succeed when the realism is as clear as the idealism' 2 October 2001 / Tony Blair
41. `Whatever the country, freedom of thought and expression are universal human rights' 25 April 2006 / Orhan Pamuk
42. `As of today, the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end' 13 February 2008 / Kevin Rudd
43. `Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward' 6 November 2012 / Barack Obama.