Voices of History Speeches That Changed the World

A celebration of the great speeches of world history and cultural life. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

In this exuberant collection, acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore takes us on a journey from ancient times to the twenty-first century. Some speeches are heroic and inspiring; some diabolical and atrocious. Some are exquisite and poignant; others cruel and chilling. The speakers themselves vary from empresses and conquerors to rock stars, novelists and sportsmen, dreamers and killers, from Churchill and Elizabeth I to Stalin and Genghis Khan, and from Michelle Obama and Cleopatra to Ronald Reagan, Nehru, and Muhammad Ali.

All human drama is here: from the carnage of battlefields to the theatre of courtrooms, from table talk to audiences of millions, from desperate last stands to orations of triumph, from noble calls for liberation to genocidal rants, from foolish delusions and strange confessions to defiant resistance and heartbreaking farewells. Voices of History spans centuries, continents, and cultures. In the accessible and gripping style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these seventy speeches are essential reading and how they enlighten our past, enrich our present, and inspire--as well as hold warnings for--our future.

SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE is a historian of Russia and the Middle East. His most recent books include Written in History: Letters that Changed the World, Titans of History: The Giants Who Made Our World, and The Romanovs: 1613-1918. Catherine the Great and Potemkin was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, the Costa Biography Award, and le Grande Prix de la biographie politique. Jerusalem: The Biography was a worldwide best seller. Montefiore lives in London.

Resistance
Boudicca, “This is a woman’s resolve,” AD 61
Elizabeth I, “The heart and stomach of a king,” 8 August 1588
John Boyega, “Black lives have always mattered,” 3 June 2020
Eleazar Ben Yair, “Let us die before we become slaves,” AD 73
Winston Churchill, “Blood, toil, tears and sweat,”13 May 1940
Emmeline Pankhurst, “I am here as a soldier,” 13 November 1913
 
Dreamers
Martin Luther King, Jr, “I have a dream,” 28 August 1963
Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a woman?” 1863 version
Muhammad Ali, “Wait till you see Muhammad Ali,” 30 October 1974
 
Freedom
Simón Bolívar, “We are not Europeans; we are not Indians; we are but a mixed species,”
    15 February 1819
Toussaint Louverture, “I want liberty and equality to reign,” 29 August 1793
Jawaharlal Nehru, “At the stroke of the midnight hour,” 14 August 1947
Nelson Mandela, “Rainbow nation,” 10 May 1994
Winston Churchill, “We shall fight on the beaches,” 4 June 1940
 
Rise and Fall
Muawiyah, “When they pull, I loosen,” 7th century AD
Elizabeth I, “I have reigned with your loves,” 30 November 1601
Winston Churchill, “This was their finest hour,” 18 June 1940
Barack Obama, “America is a place where all things are possible,” 4 November 2008
 
Decency
Abraham Lincoln, “Until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with
     the sword,” 4 March 1865
John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you,” 20 January 1961
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The ability of human beings to make and remake themselves for the
      better,” December 2012
Malala Yousafzai, “One pen and one book can change the world,” 12 July 2013
Mohandas Gandhi, “I have faith in the righteousness of our cause,” 11 March 1930
Susan B. Anthony, “Are women persons?” February–June 1873
Elizabeth II, “We will be with our friends; we will be with our families; we will meet again,” 5 April
      2020  

Battlefields
George S. Patton, Jr, “I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging sonofabitch Hitler,” 5
    June 1944
Alexander the Great, “You have Alexander,” November 333 BC
George W. Bush, “Today, our nation saw evil,” 11 September 2001
Tim Collins, “Tread lightly there,” 19 March 2003
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “A date which will live in infamy,” 8 December 1941
 
Defiance
Cleopatra, “I will not be triumphed over,” 30 BC
Oliver Cromwell, “In the name of God, go!” 20 April 1653
Ronald Reagan, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” 12 June 1987
Winston Churchill, “The Few,” 20 August 1940
 
Terror
Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, “By God I’ll grind you down to dust,” Kufa, Iraq, AD 694
Nikolai Yezhov, Josef Stalin and others, “These swine must be strangled,” 4 December 1936
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “Declare the Caliphate,” 29 June 2014
Genghis Khan, “The greatest pleasure,” 13th century
Osama bin Laden, “America is struck,” 7 October 2001
Maximilien Robespierre, “Virtue and terror,” 5 February 1794
 
Trials
Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” 399 BC
Nikolai Yezhov, “Shoot me quietly,” 3 February 1940
 
Follies
Richard Nixon, “No whitewash at the White House,” 30 April 1973
Neville Chamberlain, “Peace for our time,” 30 September 1938
Adolf Hitler, “I am at the head of the strongest army in the world,” 11 December 1941
 
Power
Theodora, “Imperial purple is the noblest burial sheet,” AD 532
Josef Stalin, “We need new blood,” 16 October 1952
Abraham Lincoln, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people,” 19 November 1863
Donald Trump, “Make America great again,” 16 June 2015
Aung San Suu Kyi, “It is not power that corrupts, but fear,” July 1991
Xi Jinping, “History is our best teacher,” 14 May 2017
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,”
     7 November 2020  

Peacemakers
Anwar al-Sadat, “I have come to Jerusalem, as the City of Peace,” 20 November 1977
Yitzhak Rabin, “Enough of blood and tears,” 13 September 1993
 
Revolution
Georges Danton, “Dare, dare again, always dare!” 2 September 1792
Mao Zedong, “The Chinese people have stood up!” 21 September 1949
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Power to the Soviets,” September 1917
Ruhollah Khomeini, “I shall smash this government in the teeth,” February 1979
 
Warmongers
Urban II, “Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre,” 27 November 1095
Cato the Elder, “Carthage must be destroyed!” 149 BC

Genocide
Adolf Hitler, “The annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe,” 30 January 1939
Heinrich Himmler, “The Jewish people are going to be exterminated,” 4 October 1943
 
Good vs Evil
Elie Wiesel, “The perils of indifference,” 12 April 1999
Boris Yeltsin, “We are all guilty,” 18 July 1998
Chaim Herzog, “Hate, ignorance and evil,” 10 November 1975
 
Prophets
Moses, “Thou shall not kill,” Exodus 20, Verses 1–26
Jesus of Nazareth, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Sermon on the Mount, St. Matthew’s Gospel,
     1st century AD
The Prophet Mohammed, “Turn then your face towards the Sacred Mosque,” from the Surah
     al-Baqarah (“The Cow”), Verse 2 (144–50), 7th century AD
 
Warnings
J. Robert Oppenheimer, “We are not only scientists; we are men, too,” 2 November 1945
Greta Thunberg, “We can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis,” 3 December 2018
 
Goodbyes
Eva Perón, “Remain faithful to Perón,” 17 October 1951
Martin Luther King, Jr, “I’ve seen the promised land,” 3 April 1968
Attila the Hun, funeral address by his henchman, “Lord of the bravest tribes . . . fell neither by an
    enemy’s blow nor by treachery, but . . . rejoicing,” AD 453
Richard Nixon, “Nobody will ever write a book about my mother,” 9 August 1974
William Pitt the Younger, “Europe is not to be saved by any single man,” 9 November 1805
Nero, “What an artist the world is losing in me,” 9 June 68 AD
Barack Obama, “We do these things because of who we are,” 1 May 2011
Napoleon Bonaparte, “Soldiers of my Old Guard: I bid you farewell,” 20 April 1814
Edward VIII, “The woman I love,” 11 December 1936
Alexander the Great, “Depart!” August 324 BC
Charles I, “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown,” 30 January 1649
Ronald Reagan, “Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue,” 28 January 1986