20th Century Speeches

"Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished."

"The super-national character of scientific concepts and scientific language is due to the fact that they have been set up by the best brains of all countries and all times."

"Without freedom there is no creation, no art, no science, no philosophy, and no progress."

"When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic... But I suppose that was exactly what I did."

"If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgment we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives."

"How happy is the one who says, 'I am a Turk!' ('Ne mutlu Türk'üm diyene!')"

"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."

"The Internet is a tidal wave. It changes the rules. It is the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981."

"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless—like water."

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read."

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: 'This was their finest hour.'"

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

"It is much easier to make war than to make peace."

"Has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No! Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished."

"Seeking truth from facts is the baseline of Marxist ideology."

"We are the Rainbow People of God! We are free, all of us, Black and white together!"

"If in your office you, as an intellectual worker, were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day... how much value could you derive?"

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home."

"Tierra y Libertad! (Land and Liberty!)"

"We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is unsufferable."

"We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself."

"Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

"Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked."

"When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease."

"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos."

"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."

"Force or the threat of force can no longer and should no longer be an instrument of foreign policy."

"The most dangerous phrase in the language is, 'We've always done it this way.'"

"It is us today. It will be you tomorrow."

"I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

"To educate a man is to educate an individual; to educate a woman is to educate an entire family."

"The cult of ignorance in the United States has been a constant strain, and there is a anti-intellectual thread winding its way through our political and cultural life."

"The people of this world must unite or they will perish."

"There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy."

"For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

"It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States."

"Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."

"Don't give up. Don't ever give up."

"The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will."

"The present crisis is caused by an acceleration in technological progress outstripping human institutional development."

"There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

"Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient work with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion."

"For me, it is a moment of anguish. All my life, my whole adult life, I have believed in merger and unity of the two territories."

"All power to the Soviets! No support for the Provisional Government!"

"It's necessary to know that it is possible that you can choose your outcome."

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

"No Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it is by struggle that it has been won, a day-to-day struggle... a struggle in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering."

"Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."

"It's gotta be the ballot or the bullet. If we don't cast a ballot, then we're going to have to be casting a bullet."

"U-turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!"

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

"An new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

"There is no salvation for India unless you strip yourselves of this jewelry and hold it in trust for your countrymen in India."

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

"Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another."

"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

"My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time."

"Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world."

"Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time."

"The balance of nature is not a status quo; it is a fluid, ever-shifting condition."

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom."

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."

"The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom."

"I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow."

"That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason."

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe... Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

"Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated."

"Prejudice against women in this country is subtle, pervasive, and institutionalized."

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days."

"The Three Principles of the People are the principles for our national salvation."

"Y'all better quiet down! I have been to jail. I have been beaten. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation."

"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena..."

"For forty years you heard from my predecessors on this day... how our country was flourishing. I assume you did not propose me to this office so that I, too, should lie to you."

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

"Do not lose faith in the ultimate victory of our righteous cause."

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."

"The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this."