a speech on peace in english

Speech: ‘Be the light that brings hope and that accelerates progress towards an equal, sustainable, and peaceful future’

Opening remarks delivered by un women executive director sima bahous at the un official commemoration of international women’s day, 8 march 2024, un headquarters.

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[As delivered.]

I will begin on this International Women’s Day with a moment of reflection for all the women and girls killed in wars and conflicts that are not of their making.

Wars and conflicts are eroding the achievements of decades of investments in gender equality and women’s empowerment. From the Middle East, to Haiti, to Sudan, Myanmar, the Sahel, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the world, women pay the biggest price of conflicts.

Conflict is inherently violent, but for women and girls ever more so, including in sexual and gender-based ways. This is intolerable. No woman or girl anywhere, ever, should experience sexual violence or any form of violence. UN Women, alongside everyone here, condemns it unequivocally.

The need for peace has never been more urgent. We salute women everywhere who strive to bring peace every day, who are human rights activists, who are human rights defenders, who lead and fight for change.

This year’s International Women’s Day sees a world hobbled by confrontation, fragmentation, fear, and, most of all, inequality.

Persistent poverty gaps continue to exist worldwide, and women bear an increasingly heavy burden. One in every ten women in the world lives in extreme poverty. Poverty has a female face.

Men own 105 trillion dollars [USD] more wealth than women. They dominate the corridors of power.

And the pushback against gender equality is well resourced and powerful, fuelled by anti-gender movements, de-democratization, restricted civic space, a breakdown of trust between people and state, and regressive policies and legislation.

We all feel this pushback acutely. Our values and principles have never been as challenged as they are today.

I thank all of you for lending your energies to this struggle, to the cause of women’s rights and gender equality, and I thank you all for joining us in pushing forward against the pushback.

This year’s International Women’s Day calls us all to invest in women and girls and to accelerate progress.

It is only by investing in women and girls that we will meet the challenges we face, be they economic-, conflict- or climate-related.

Investing in women and girls is indisputably the best pathway to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals , to peace and security.

When more women are economically empowered, economies grow.

Where women are equally represented in government, governance thrives.

Where women are free to live their lives without the perpetual threat of violence, families flourish, and businesses benefit.

Where women have a bigger say in peace processes, peace is found sooner and is more durable.

But in spite of these clear facts, we continue to stubbornly invest in weapons more than we invest in women and girls.

We continue to say gender equality can be postponed for “later”, as we watch the world fall further off track, and even “later” is postponed.

In the coming months and year, we have a collective opportunity to recommit ourselves to gender equality. The Summit of the Future presents an opportunity to centrally place gender equality across discussions on development, financing, technology, and peace and security. The thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action next year has the potential to be a watershed moment for increased and accelerated action to make truth of the promises made 29 years ago. I welcome the Secretary-General’s announcement of the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan. Please count on UN Women as your partners in this.

The International Women’s Day this year has a call. And this call is clear and compelling. For every woman and girl, we ask that we finally make the best investment we can: financing gender equality and unlocking its dividends for all. More than 100 million women and girls could be lifted out of poverty if governments prioritized education, healthcare, fair and equal wages, and expanded social benefits. We know that when women raise their voices it is for equality, for their rights and for the rights of others, for peace and justice for all. They fight to leave a better world behind them for all the people and for our shared planet.

On International Women’s Day we elevate their voice. We elevate their cause, and our cause. We commit to affording it the resources it deserves and demands.

Allow me before I end to echo the call of the Secretary-General, the President of the General Assembly, the Chair of the Commission on the Status of Women: We need a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza now. More than 9000 women have been killed in Gaza, and this must stop. We cannot return to a path to peace without justice for all survivors of this conflict—and I say all survivors of this conflict—and without an end to the indiscriminate violence in Gaza.

I began my remarks today with a moment of reflection. I end my remarks with a call for all of us to be the light that brings hope and that accelerates progress towards an equal, sustainable, and peaceful future. For all people. For every woman and for every girl, everywhere. I know that together, it is within our reach.

I thank you.

• 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
• Executive Director
• Conflict, war
• Commission on the Status of Women
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Financing for gender equality
• Economic empowerment
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Governance and national planning
• Intergovernmental processes
• Peace and security
• UN Women administration

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Speech on peace delivered by President John F. Kennedy

[…] “What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of…

The Peace Corps

Speech on peace delivered by President John F. Kennedy at American University on 10 June 1963

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President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst’s enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and to the conduct of the public’s business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation’s thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.

“There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university,” wrote John Masefield, in his tribute to English universities—and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He ad-mired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was “a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.”

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived—yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surren-der without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Sec-ond World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles—which can only destroy and never create—is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dra-matic as the pursuit of war—and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament—and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also be-lieve that we must reexamine our own attitude—as individuals and as a Nation—for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward—by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable—that mankind is doomed—that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made—therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of uni-versal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace—based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions—on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the in-terest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace—no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many na-tions, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process—a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful set-tlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move ir-resistibly toward it.

Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actu-ally believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims—such as the allegation that “American imperialist cir-cles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . and that the political aims of the American imperialists are to en-slave economically and politically the European and other cap-italist countries . . . and to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars.”

Truly, as it was written long ago: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements—to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning—a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevi-table, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements—in science and space, in eco-nomic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhor-rence of war. Almost unique, among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland—a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again—no matter how—our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this Nation’s closest allies—our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter-weapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours—and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to ac-cept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So, let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also di-rect attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. 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.

Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.

We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists’ interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America’s weapons are non-provocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people—but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective in-strument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system—a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.

At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others—by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neigh-bors in Mexico and in Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge.

Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope—and the purpose of allied policies—to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their polit-ical and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all na-tions could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.

This will require a new effort to achieve world law—a new context for world discussions. It will require increased under-standing between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communica-tion. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and mis-readings of the other’s actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also been talking in Geneva about other first-step measures of arms control, designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long-range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament—designed to take place by stages, per-mitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920’s. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort—to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.

The one major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest haz-ards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security—it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.

First: Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history—but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.

Second: To make clear our good faith and solemn convic-tions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives—as many of you who are graduating today will have a unique opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.

But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete.

It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government—local, State, and National—to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever that authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.

All this is not unrelated to world peace. “When a man’s ways please the Lord,” the Scriptures tell us, “he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights—the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation—the right to breathe air as nature provided it—the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can-—if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers—offer far more security and far fewer risks than an un-abated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough—more than enough—of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on—not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

Thank you to Sweet William, author of  JFK & RFK Made Me Do It:   1960–1968  for suggesting the publication of this speech today.

Looking back, 1960 an intern at WGBH-TV meeting JFK, first seeking the Democratic Party nomination, then as nominee, when he was the guest on Louis Lyons’ (Nieman Journalism Foundation Curator, Harvard) news program on which I was thssistant.

On the first, Lyons spoke to Hubert Humphreys’ idea of what would become the Peace Corps, something similar to the American Friends Service Committee and other programs abroad. And about as alternative to waging war, to promote peace. .

SENATOR John Kennedy replied in his best almost happy/ smart manner that it was a good idea and that good ideas from any source he would support. Then he added with almost a wink: “When I am president, I will start such a program” (or words pretty close to that, and ending with his handsome head cocked to the side and smiling — you know like the cat that ate the cream).

I was 23 then and thrilled not just at the idea for beginning such an organization but as much for the joyful intelligence/ daring-do..

Then as a Peace Corps Volunteer before heading abard a propeller 2-engine airplane to Ghana in late August 1961 in the White House, I attended PRESIDENT Kennedy both in the Rose Garden and in Oval Office that day with other volunteers who would head to Columbia, Tanganyika, The Phillipines & my own contingent of 49 (Arnold Zeitdlin, 50th, came later) with Ghana One.. Arnold later wrote the first book about the Peace Corps. Robert Klein another PCV Ghana One wrote BEING FIRST in 2010.

Edward Mycue now 84 Tuesday November 23, 2021 remembering early days before and as our U.S. Peace Corps began.

A good account of what Peace Corps Volunteers may have experienced then and later PCV’S met and experienced is in John Coyne’s 2014 novel LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY, about the PCV’s of Ethiopia spanning four decades.

Hey can we be friends or do you want to date because I’m free.

EDWARD MYCUE

THIS SPEECH IS WHY THE CIA HAD KENNEDY KILLED.

[…] “What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” – President John F. Kennedy at American University – Summer, 1963 […]

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Malala Yousafzai: Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

"This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change." {"content":{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"content":[{"data":{},"marks":[],"value":"\"This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.\"","nodeType":"text"}],"nodeType":"paragraph"}],"nodeType":"document"}}

Oslo, Norway

Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim. In the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficent.

Your Majesties, Your royal highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,

Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and love. Thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all around the world. Your kind and encouraging words strengthens and inspires me.

I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth — which we strongly believe is the true message of Islam. And also thank you to all my wonderful teachers, who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave.

I am proud, well in fact, I am very proud to be the first Pashtun, the first Pakistani, and the youngest person to receive this award. Along with that, along with that, I am pretty certain that I am also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers. I want there to be peace everywhere, but my brothers and I are still working on that.

I am also honoured to receive this award together with Kailash Satyarthi, who has been a champion for children's rights for a long time. Twice as long, in fact, than I have been alive. I am proud that we can work together, we can work together and show the world that an Indian and a Pakistani, they can work together and achieve their goals of children's rights.

Dear brothers and sisters, I was named after the inspirational Malalai of Maiwand who is the Pashtun Joan of Arc. The word Malala means grief stricken "sad," but in order to lend some happiness to it, my grandfather would always call me Malala — "The happiest girl in the world" and today I am very happy that we are together fighting for an important cause.

This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.

I am here to stand up for their rights, to raise their voice… it is not time to pity them. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time, the last time, so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education.

I have found that people describe me in many different ways.

Some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban.

And some, the girl who fought for her rights.

Some people, call me a "Nobel laureate" now.

However, my brothers still call me that annoying bossy sister. As far as I know, I am just a committed and even stubborn person who wants to see every child getting quality education, who wants to see women having equal rights and who wants peace in every corner of the world.

Education is one of the blessings of life — and one of its necessities. That has been my experience during the 17 years of my life. In my paradise home, Swat, I always loved learning and discovering new things. I remember when my friends and I would decorate our hands with henna on special occasions. And instead of drawing flowers and patterns we would paint our hands with mathematical formulas and equations.

We had a thirst for education, we had a thirst for education because our future was right there in that classroom. We would sit and learn and read together. We loved to wear neat and tidy school uniforms and we would sit there with big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could also excel in our studies and achieve those goals, which some people think only boys can.

But things did not remain the same. When I was in Swat, which was a place of tourism and beauty, suddenly changed into a place of terrorism. I was just ten that more than 400 schools were destroyed. Women were flogged. People were killed. And our beautiful dreams turned into nightmares.

Education went from being a right to being a crime.

Girls were stopped from going to school.

When my world suddenly changed, my priorities changed too. I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed.

I chose the second one. I decided to speak up.

We could not just stand by and see those injustices of the terrorists denying our rights, ruthlessly killing people and misusing the name of Islam. We decided to raise our voice and tell them: Have you not learnt, have you not learnt that in the Holy Quran Allah says: if you kill one person it is as if you kill the whole humanity? Do you not know that Mohammad, peace be upon him, the prophet of mercy, he says, do not harm yourself or others."

And do you not know that the very first word of the Holy Quran is the word Iqra," which means "read"?

The terrorists tried to stop us and attacked me and my friends who are here today, on our school bus in 2012, but neither their ideas nor their bullets could win.

We survived. And since that day, our voices have grown louder and louder.

I tell my story, not because it is unique, but because it is not.

It is the story of many girls.

Today, I tell their stories too. I have brought with me some of my sisters from Pakistan, from Nigeria and from Syria, who share this story. My brave sisters Shazia and Kainat who were also shot that day on our school bus. But they have not stopped learning. And my brave sister Kainat Soomro who went through severe abuse and extreme violence, even her brother was killed, but she did not succumb.

Also my sisters here, whom I have met during my Malala Fund campaign. My 16-year-old courageous sister, Muzoon from Syria, who now lives in Jordan as refugee and goes from tent to tent encouraging girls and boys to learn. And my sister Amina, from the North of Nigeria, where Boko Haram threatens, and stops girls and even kidnaps girls, just for wanting to go to school.

Though I appear as one girl, though I appear as one girl, one person, who is 5 foot 2 inches tall, if you include my high heels. (It means I am 5 foot only) I am not a lone voice, I am not a lone voice, I am many.

I am Malala. But I am also Shazia.

I am Kainat.

I am Kainat Soomro.

I am Muzoon.

I am Amina.

I am those 66 million girls* who are deprived of education. And today I am not raising my voice, it is the voice of those 66 million girls.

We see many people becoming refugees in Syria, Gaza and Iraq. In Afghanistan, we see families being killed in suicide attacks and bomb blasts.

Many children in Africa do not have access to education because of poverty. And as I said, we still see, we still see girls who have no freedom to go to school in the north of Nigeria.

Many children in countries like Pakistan and India, as Kailash Satyarthi mentioned, many children, especially in India and Pakistan are deprived of their right to education because of social taboos, or they have been forced into child marriage or into child labour.

One of my very good school friends, the same age as me, who had always been a bold and confident girl, dreamed of becoming a doctor. But her dream remained a dream. At the age of 12, she was forced to get married. And then soon she had a son, she had a child when she herself was still a child — only 14. I know that she could have been a very good doctor.

But she couldn't, because she was a girl.

Her story is why I dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to Malala Fund, to help give girls quality education, everywhere, anywhere in the world and to raise their voices. The first place this funding will go to is where my heart is, to build schools in Pakistan — especially in my home of Swat and Shangla.

In my own village, there is still no secondary school for girls. And it is my wish and my commitment, and now my challenge to build one so that my friends and my sisters can go there to school and get quality education and to get this opportunity to fulfil their dreams.

This is where I will begin, but it is not where I will stop. I will continue this fight until I see every child, every child in school.

Dear brothers and sisters, great people, who brought change, like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi, once stood here on this stage. I hope the steps that Kailash Satyarthi and I have taken so far and will take on this journey will also bring change — lasting change.

My great hope is that this will be the last time, this will be the last time we must fight for education. Let's solve this once and for all.

We have already taken many steps. Now it is time to take a leap. It is not time to tell the world leaders to realise how important education is — they already know it — their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action for the rest of the world's children.

We ask the world leaders to unite and make education their top priority.

Fifteen years ago, the world leaders decided on a set of global goals, the Millennium Development Goals. In the years that have followed, we have seen some progress. The number of children out of school has been halved, as Kailash Satyarthi said. However, the world focused only on primary education, and progress did not reach everyone.

In year 2015, representatives from all around the world will meet in the United Nations to set the next set of goals, the Sustainable Development Goals. This will set the world's ambition for the next generations.

The world can no longer accept, the world can no longer accept that basic education is enough. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries, only basic literacy is sufficient, when their own children do homework in Algebra, Mathematics, Science and Physics?

Leaders must seize this opportunity to guarantee a free, quality, primary and secondary education for every child.

Some will say this is impractical, or too expensive, or too hard. Or maybe even impossible. But it is time the world thinks bigger.

Dear sisters and brothers, the so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don't. Why is it that countries which we call strong" are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it, why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?

We are living in the modern age and we believe that nothing is impossible. We have reached the moon 45 years ago and maybe will soon land on Mars. Then, in this 21st century, we must be able to give every child quality education.

Dear sisters and brothers, dear fellow children, we must work… not wait. Not just the politicians and the world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. We. It is our duty.

Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last, let us become the first generation that decides to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods, and wasted potentials.

Let this be the last time that a girl or a boy spends their childhood in a factory.

Let this be the last time that a girl is forced into early child marriage.

Let this be the last time that a child loses life in war.

Let this be the last time that we see a child out of school.

Let this end with us.

Let's begin this ending together, today, right here, right now. Let's begin this ending now. Thank you so much.

*Note: UNESCO now estimates more than 130 million girls around the world are out of school.

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist, student, UN messenger of peace and the youngest Nobel Laureate. As co-founder of Malala Fund, she is building a world where every girl can learn and lead without fear.

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Un headquarters, 16 september 2022, secretary-general's remarks at the peace bell ceremony on the occasion of the international day of peace, antónio guterres.

Mr. President of the General Assembly, Excellencies, distinguished guests, Messengers of Peace, dear students, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for joining us to sound the call for peace.

As we meet today, peace is under assault.

Across regions, countries and communities.

The poison of war is infecting our world.

Jeopardizing the lives of millions. 

Turning people against each other.

Pitting nation against nation.

Eroding security and wellbeing.

Reversing development.

And it is also pushing our shared goals for the future farther and farther away.

Instead of fighting each other on the battlefield, humanity should be rallying together to tackle the common challenges we face.

Like poverty, hunger and inequality.

Climate change and biodiversity loss.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to devastate lives and economies alike.

And racism – the focus of this year’s International Day of Peace.

Advancing the cause of peace is the primary mission of the United Nations.

But the task of building peace belongs to every person.

Together, let’s wage peace.

Peace for our planet.

Peace for developing countries being victimized by a deeply unfair global financial system.

Peace in the name of equality for all – by ending all forms of discrimination, racism and hate speech.

Peace for the young people who have joined us here today, who will inherit the consequences of the decisions we make – or we fail to make.

And most importantly, peace for those millions of people today living through the horrors of war.

Now more than ever, we need global solidarity, collective action, commitment and mutual trust. 

It starts here – and it starts now. 

Let us sound the call for a world of peace for all people.

Before I ring this peace bell, please join me in a brief moment of silence to reflect on the meaning and necessity of peace.

[MOMENT OF SILENCE]

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Speech on peace [1, 2, 3, 5 minutes], 2 minutes speech on peace.

Dear teachers and students!

Greetings to all. and thank you to all of you to give me chance to give a speech.

The absence of hostility, violence, and fear characteristics a state of peace. It is a place where different cultures, religions, and ideas are respected and celebrated, and where people live in peace and harmony with one another and with other groups. The growth and well-being of people, communities, and nations depend on peace.

Addressing the underlying causes of conflict, such as poverty, inequality, and injustice, is crucial for bringing about peace. This can be accomplished by combining various initiatives, such as good governance, economic development, and educational advancement. Additionally, it is crucial to address problems like discrimination and oppression because they can stoke resentment and anger, which can then result in violence and conflict.

Effective intergroup communication and dialogue is a crucial component in fostering peace. Finding common ground and developing trust can be accomplished by listening to and comprehending the viewpoints of others. This can result in effective negotiation and a readiness to make concessions, both of which are necessary for resolving disputes and bringing about peace.

It’s crucial to understand that peace should not only be the absence of violence but also include constructive actions and moral principles. I want to request you to behave with peaceful behaviors like Compassion, Generosity, fairness, and respect for one another. This peaceful behavior is helpful to the development and sustainability of a peaceful culture. Dear friends don’t forget that very one has a responsibility to maintain peace, not just governments and leaders. Speaking out against injustice and violence, as well as encouraging respect and cooperation between various groups, are all ways that we can all contribute to peace. Only by working together can we hope to bring about a lasting peace.

Quotes for Speech about Peace

• “Peace is not merely a distant goal but a journey we walk with every step.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
• “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” – Albert Einstein
• “Peace begins with a smile.” – Mother Teresa
• “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Mahatma Gandhi
• “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” – Nelson Mandela
• “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict.” – Dorothy Thompson
• “Peace is a journey of a thousand miles, and it must be taken one step at a time.” – Lyndon B. Johnson
• “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” – Mahatma Gandhi
• “Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.” – Robert Fulghum
• “Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.” – Buddha
• “Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” – John Lennon
• “World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.” – Dalai Lama
• “Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” – Wayne Dyer
• “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Jimi Hendrix

5 Minutes Speech on Peace

In our individual lives, our communities, and the globe at large, we all aspire to live in peace. Finding peace, however, is not always simple since it frequently calls for compromise, comprehension, and a desire to band together and work toward a shared objective.

Practice peace in our own lives as one of the first things we can do to advance it. Even when we disagree with someone, we should still show them courtesy and respect. It entails hearing many viewpoints and making an effort to comprehend others’ opinions. Additionally, it entails taking accountability for our own deeds and attempting to settle disputes amicably.

But establishing a just and equitable society is also important for maintaining peace; it goes beyond individual acts. Access to the fundamentals of life, such as food, housing, and healthcare, is what it means to live in peace. It entails tackling issues like poverty, injustice, and prejudice that are the main drivers of violence.

The presence of justice, not the absence of conflict, is what defines peace, so it’s crucial to keep that in mind as well. We need to be prepared to face and resolve the problems that put the peace at risk if we want to keep it. By doing so, you are defending human rights and speaking out against injustice.

We as a global society must unite in order to bring about world peace. To do this, it is necessary to collaborate with individuals from other origins and cultures as well as to be prepared to set aside our differences in order to work toward a shared objective.

Being conscious of the problems that threaten it, such as war, terrorism, and prejudice, is another way that we may contribute to the promotion of world peace. When we observe these problems occurring, we should not be afraid to speak out and take appropriate action.

In summary, we may all work toward and contribute to the creation of peace. The creation of a just and equitable society begins with individual activities, but it also necessitates a group effort, as well as a readiness to face and resolve the problems that endanger it. Together, let’s work to advance world peace.

Thanks a lot.

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Check out the Short & Long International Day Of Peace Speech!

International Day Of Peace Speech: The International Day of Peace (or World Peace Day), observed annually on September 21, is dedicated to promoting peace ideals within and among all nations and peoples. On this day, students and teachers are asked to give an International Day Of Peace Speech commemorating the International Day of Peace. This article contains sample short and long speeches on International Day of Peace that students can use to create their own International Day of Peace Speech.

Continue reading to obtain short and long samples of the International Day Of Peace Speech. If you are looking for a speech for Peace Day, then you are at the right place as this article includes an International Peace Day speech for students.

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Short International Day of Peace Speech

Long international day of peace speech, international day of peace speech faqs.

Use the short speech provided below to help you write an International Day Of Peace Speech. This world peace day speech in English will give you a clue about how to write your own short speech on peace day.

Good morning, everyone in attendance. My name is XYZ from _ Standard. Today, I will deliver a speech commemorating the International Day of Peace.

As we all know, the International Day of Peace (or World Peace Day) is observed annually on September 21 and is dedicated to promoting the ideals of peace within and among all nations and peoples. At a time when war and violence frequently dominate our news cycles, the International Day of Peace serves as an inspiring reminder of what we can achieve when we work together. Peace. Let’s give it a shot!

The United Nations General Assembly designated September 3rd as the International Day of Peace in 1981. This day fell on the first day of the General Assembly’s annual session. The goal of the day was and continues to be, to strengthen the ideals of peace around the world.

Two decades after establishing this day of observance, the assembly changed the date to September 21 in 2001. As a result, since 2002, September 21 has marked not only a time to discuss how to promote and sustain peace among all peoples, but also a 24-hour period of global ceasefire and nonviolence for groups engaged in active combat. Life is better in a peaceful world, and we now look to those who have been peacemakers and peacekeepers to learn what we can all do individually to make the world a more peaceful place.

The belief that all humans are valuable, with no one group being better than another, is at the heart of peaceful relations; consider how you can contribute to this understanding in your sphere of influence.

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We learn from the great peacemakers who have gone before us and then inspire those around us in the same way. Girls who have been told they cannot attend school because of their gender learn to demand equal rights after witnessing a courageous Pakistani girl fight for her right to attend school. People of colour learn to expect equality from the leaders who rallied during the Civil Rights Movement. In the same way, your actions motivate others to be and do better. Your actions have a significant impact on achieving peace, not only because of what you do but also because of what you inspire others to do.

You can modify the above-mentioned speech on peace day for stud ents to suit your needs and prepare your own short international day of peace speech.

Use the long speech on peace day in English provided below to help you write an International Day Of Peace Speech.

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The United Nations General Assembly designated September 3rd as the International Day of Peace in 1981. This day fell on the first day of the General Assembly’s annual session. The goal of the day was, and continues to be, to strengthen the ideals of peace around the world.

Two decades after establishing this day of observance, the assembly changed the date to September 21 in 2001. As a result, since 2002, September 21 has marked not only a time to discuss how to promote and sustain peace among all peoples, but also a 24-hour period of global ceasefire and nonviolence for groups engaged in active combat.

Peace is attainable. Throughout history, most societies have mostly lived in peace. Today, we are far less likely than our parents or grandparents to die in a war. Since the creation of the United Nations and the creation of the United Nations Charter, governments have been obligated not to use force against others unless they are acting in self-defence or have been authorised to do so by the UN Security Council.

Life is better in a peaceful world, and we now look to those who have been peacemakers and peacekeepers to learn what we can all do individually to make the world a more peaceful place.

The United Nations General Assembly established the International Day of Peace to strengthen peace standards. The day is dedicated to observing 24 hours of nonviolence and cease-fire.

Today, more than ever, it is critical to promote peace and open-mindedness for acceptance across gender, race, and territory. Individuals and organisations all over the world take part in activities and host events centred on a yearly theme. Activities range from private gatherings to public ceremonies, festivals, and concerts that spread the message of peace to large crowds.

Educational institutions also take the lead, organising art exhibitions and lessons for students to discuss how different cultures celebrate peace and to learn about historical conflicts and wars so that mistakes are not repeated. Individuals participate in activities such as planting trees or releasing caged animals, as every small act contributes to the spread of the message of peace and love.

What exactly do we mean when we speak of peace? Many people believe that it is when everyone feels safe and accepted in their communities, and this is correct. However, it is more than that. The truth is that there is no single definition of peace because it differs for each of us. When I think of peace, I think of how important it is for people to accept and celebrate their differences. When you think of peace, you might think of the same thing, or you might think of peace as more about celebrating similarities and treating people with kindness because we’re all human underneath it all. Neither version is incorrect.

But how do we achieve peace if we all have different definitions of what it is? That’s the thing: peace is only as good as we make it. It is about what we as a human community achieve collectively when we strive for peace. Perhaps your definition of peace is the ability of children all over the world to attend school. Whatever it is, you have the ability to achieve it. Every action you take, or every action you choose not to take, has the potential to either build or destroy peace. You make your definition of peace a reality when you stand up to a bully or make an effort to include someone. All of these small actions add up to big results.

We cannot expect to wake up one day to a world that has “achieved peace.” It is entirely up to us. Our heroes, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Malala Yousafzai, did not have a grand, master plan to achieve world peace. It happens in stages. It is a collaborative effort by everyone on the planet. We learn to treat people better, to stand up for our rights and the rights of others, one day at a time. We learn from the great peacemakers who have gone before us and then inspire those around us in the same way. Girls who have been told they cannot attend school because of their gender learn to demand equal rights after witnessing a courageous Pakistani girl fight for her right to attend school. People of colour learn to expect equality from the leaders who rallied during the Civil Rights Movement. In the same way, your actions motivate others to be and do better. Your actions have a significant impact on achieving peace, not only because of what you do, but also because of what you inspire others to do.

Poverty, disease, education, and healthcare are all issues that nations and communities around the world face. The International Day of Peace reminds us that we are more alike than we are different, regardless of where we come from or what languages we speak.

You can modify the above-mentioned student speech on peace day to prepare your long International Day of Peace speech as needed.

Hope you found this article on speech writing on International Day of Peace speech helpful. Take help from the speech on international day of peace samples and curate your best speech for the day. Click on the link to get Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti Speech .

We celebrate to honour those who have worked and continue to work hard to end conflict and promote peace.

The United Nations established the International Day of Peace to raise awareness and promote peace ideals.

Celebrate in whatever way you want, as long as it is peaceful! Observing a minute of silence at midday creates a “peace wave” across the globe; doing so is a good start.

On September 21, the world celebrates International Day of Peace.

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40 famous persuasive speeches you need to hear.

Written by Kai Xin Koh

Across eras of calamity and peace in our world’s history, a great many leaders, writers, politicians, theorists, scientists, activists and other revolutionaries have unveiled powerful rousing speeches in their bids for change. In reviewing the plethora of orators across tides of social, political and economic change, we found some truly rousing speeches that brought the world to their feet or to a startling, necessary halt. We’ve chosen 40 of the most impactful speeches we managed to find from agents of change all over the world – a diversity of political campaigns, genders, positionalities and periods of history. You’re sure to find at least a few speeches in this list which will capture you with the sheer power of their words and meaning!

1. I have a dream by MLK

“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

Unsurprisingly, Martin Luther King’s speech comes up top as the most inspiring speech of all time, especially given the harrowing conditions of African Americans in America at the time. In the post-abolition era when slavery was outlawed constitutionally, African Americans experienced an intense period of backlash from white supremacists who supported slavery where various institutional means were sought to subordinate African American people to positions similar to that of the slavery era. This later came to be known as the times of Jim Crow and segregation, which Martin Luther King powerfully voiced his vision for a day when racial discrimination would be a mere figment, where equality would reign.

2. Tilbury Speech by Queen Elizabeth I

“My loving people, We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you on a word of a prince, they shall be duly paid. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.”

While at war with Spain, Queen Elizabeth I was most renowned for her noble speech rallying the English troops against their comparatively formidable opponent. Using brilliant rhetorical devices like metonymy, meronymy, and other potent metaphors, she voiced her deeply-held commitment as a leader to the battle against the Spanish Armada – convincing the English army to keep holding their ground and upholding the sacrifice of war for the good of their people. Eventually against all odds, she led England to victory despite their underdog status in the conflict with her confident and masterful oratory.

3. Woodrow Wilson, address to Congress (April 2, 1917)

“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. … It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us—however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship—exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions toward the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live among us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few. It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson of the USA delivered his address to Congress, calling for declaration of war against what was at the time, a belligerent and aggressive Germany in WWI. Despite his isolationism and anti-war position earlier in his tenure as president, he convinced Congress that America had a moral duty to the world to step out of their neutral observer status into an active role of world leadership and stewardship in order to liberate attacked nations from their German aggressors. The idealistic values he preached in his speech left an indelible imprint upon the American spirit and self-conception, forming the moral basis for the country’s people and aspirational visions to this very day.

4. Ain’t I A Woman by Sojourner Truth

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman? … If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”

Hailing from a background of slavery and oppression, Sojourner Truth was one of the most revolutionary advocates for women’s human rights in the 1800s. In spite of the New York Anti-Slavery Law of 1827, her slavemaster refused to free her. As such, she fled, became an itinerant preacher and leading figure in the anti-slavery movement. By the 1850s, she became involved in the women’s rights movement as well. At the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, she delivered her illuminating, forceful speech against discrimination of women and African Americans in the post-Civil War era, entrenching her status as one of the most revolutionary abolitionists and women’s rights activists across history.

5. The Gettsyburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

President Abraham Lincoln had left the most lasting legacy upon American history for good reason, as one of the presidents with the moral courage to denounce slavery for the national atrocity it was. However, more difficult than standing up for the anti-slavery cause was the task of unifying the country post-abolition despite the looming shadows of a time when white Americans could own and subjugate slaves with impunity over the thousands of Americans who stood for liberation of African Americans from discrimination. He urged Americans to remember their common roots, heritage and the importance of “charity for all”, to ensure a “just and lasting peace” among within the country despite throes of racial division and self-determination.

6. Woman’s Rights to the Suffrage by Susan B Anthony

“For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are for ever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the right govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household–which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the nation. Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no State has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as in every one against Negroes.”

Susan B. Anthony was a pivotal leader in the women’s suffrage movement who helped to found the National Woman Suffrage Association with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and fight for the constitutional right for women to vote. She courageously and relentlessly advocated for women’s rights, giving speeches all over the USA to convince people of women’s human rights to choice and the ballot. She is most well known for her act of righteous rebellion in 1872 when she voted in the presidential election illegally, for which she was arrested and tried unsuccessfully. She refused to pay the $100 fine in a bid to reject the demands of the American system she denounced as a ‘hateful oligarchy of sex’, sparking change with her righteous oratory and inspiring many others in the women’s suffrage movement within and beyond America.

7. Vladimir Lenin’s Speech at an International Meeting in Berne, February 8, 1916

“It may sound incredible, especially to Swiss comrades, but it is nevertheless true that in Russia, also, not only bloody tsarism, not only the capitalists, but also a section of the so-called or ex-Socialists say that Russia is fighting a “war of defence,” that Russia is only fighting against German invasion. The whole world knows, however, that for decades tsarism has been oppressing more than a hundred million people belonging to other nationalities in Russia; that for decades Russia has been pursuing a predatory policy towards China, Persia, Armenia and Galicia. Neither Russia, nor Germany, nor any other Great Power has the right to claim that it is waging a “war of defence”; all the Great Powers are waging an imperialist, capitalist war, a predatory war, a war for the oppression of small and foreign nations, a war for the sake of the profits of the capitalists, who are coining golden profits amounting to billions out of the appalling sufferings of the masses, out of the blood of the proletariat. … This again shows you, comrades, that in all countries of the world real preparations are being made to rally the forces of the working class. The horrors of war and the sufferings of the people are incredible. But we must not, and we have no reason whatever, to view the future with despair. The millions of victims who will fall in the war, and as a consequence of the war, will not fall in vain. The millions who are starving, the millions who are sacrificing their lives in the trenches, are not only suffering, they are also gathering strength, are pondering over the real cause of the war, are becoming more determined and are acquiring a clearer revolutionary understanding. Rising discontent of the masses, growing ferment, strikes, demonstrations, protests against the war—all this is taking place in all countries of the world. And this is the guarantee that the European War will be followed by the proletarian revolution against capitalism”

Vladimir Lenin remains to this day one of the most lauded communist revolutionaries in the world who brought the dangers of imperialism and capitalism to light with his rousing speeches condemning capitalist structures of power which inevitably enslave people to lives of misery and class stratification. In his genuine passion for the rights of the working class, he urged fellow comrades to turn the “imperialist war” into a “civil” or class war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. He encouraged the development of new revolutionary socialist organisations, solidarity across places in society so people could unite against their capitalist overlords, and criticised nationalism for its divisive effect on the socialist movement. In this speech especially, he lambasts “bloody Tsarism” for its oppression of millions of people of other nationalities in Russia, calling for the working class people to revolt against the Tsarist authority for the proletariat revolution to succeed and liberate them from class oppression.

8. I Have A Dream Speech by Mary Wollstonecraft

“If, I say, for I would not impress by declamation when Reason offers her sober light, if they be really capable of acting like rational creatures, let them not be treated like slaves; or, like the brutes who are dependent on the reason of man, when they associate with him; but cultivate their minds, give them the salutary, sublime curb of principle, and let them attain conscious dignity by feeling themselves only dependent on God. Teach them, in common with man, to submit to necessity, instead of giving, to render them more pleasing, a sex to morals. Further, should experience prove that they cannot attain the same degree of strength of mind, perseverance, and fortitude, let their virtues be the same in kind, though they may vainly struggle for the same degree; and the superiority of man will be equally clear, if not clearer; and truth, as it is a simple principle, which admits of no modification, would be common to both. Nay, the order of society as it is at present regulated would not be inverted, for woman would then only have the rank that reason assigned her, and arts could not be practised to bring the balance even, much less to turn it.”

In her vindication of the rights of women, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the pioneers of the feminist movement back in 1792 who not only theorised and advocated revolutionarily, but gave speeches that voiced these challenges against a dominantly sexist society intent on classifying women as irrational less-than-human creatures to be enslaved as they were. In this landmark speech, she pronounces her ‘dream’ of a day when women would be treated as the rational, deserving humans they are, who are equal to man in strength and capability. With this speech setting an effective precedent for her call to equalize women before the law, she also went on to champion the provision of equal educational opportunities to women and girls, and persuasively argued against the patriarchal gender norms which prevented women from finding their own lot in life through their being locked into traditional institutions of marriage and motherhood against their will.

9. First Inaugural Speech by Franklin D Roosevelt

“So, first of all, 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. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. … More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly. … I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken Nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption. But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis — broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

Roosevelt’s famous inaugural speech was delivered in the midst of a period of immense tension and strain under the Great Depression, where he highlighted the need for ‘quick action’ by Congress to prepare for government expansion in his pursuit of reforms to lift the American people out of devastating poverty. In a landslide victory, he certainly consolidated the hopes and will of the American people through this compelling speech.

10. The Hypocrisy of American Slavery by Frederick Douglass

“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

On 4 July 1852, Frederick Douglass gave this speech in Rochester, New York, highlighting the hypocrisy of celebrating freedom while slavery continues. He exposed the ‘revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy’ of slavery which had gone unabolished amidst the comparatively obscene celebration of independence and liberty with his potent speech and passion for the anti-abolition cause. After escaping from slavery, he went on to become a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York with his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. To this day, his fierce activism and devotion to exposing virulent racism for what it was has left a lasting legacy upon pro-Black social movements and the overall sociopolitical landscape of America.

11. Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

“You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.”

With her iconic poem Still I Rise , Maya Angelou is well-known for uplifting fellow African American women through her empowering novels and poetry and her work as a civil rights activist. Every bit as lyrical on the page, her recitation of Still I Rise continues to give poetry audiences shivers all over the world, inspiring women of colour everywhere to keep the good faith in striving for equality and peace, while radically believing in and empowering themselves to be agents of change. A dramatic reading of the poem will easily showcase the self-belief, strength and punch that it packs in the last stanza on the power of resisting marginalization.

12. Their Finest Hour by Winston Churchill

“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. 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.””

In the darkest shadows cast by war, few leaders have been able to step up to the mantle and effectively unify millions of citizens for truly sacrificial causes. Winston Churchill was the extraordinary exception – lifting 1940 Britain out of the darkness with his hopeful, convicted rhetoric to galvanise the English amidst bleak, dreary days of war and loss. Through Britain’s standalone position in WWII against the Nazis, he left his legacy by unifying the nation under shared sacrifices of the army and commemorating their courage.

13. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

“Life for both sexes – and I looked at them (through a restaurant window while waiting for my lunch to be served), shouldering their way along the pavement – is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority – it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney – for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination – over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the great sources of his power….Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn their crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilised societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness in life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgment, civilising natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is?”

In this transformational speech , Virginia Woolf pronounces her vision that ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’. She calls out the years in which women have been deprived of their own space for individual development through being chained to traditional arrangements or men’s prescriptions – demanding ‘gigantic courage’ and ‘confidence in oneself’ to brave through the onerous struggle of creating change for women’s rights. With her steadfast, stolid rhetoric and radical theorization, she paved the way for many women’s rights activists and writers to forge their own paths against patriarchal authority.

14. Inaugural Address by John F Kennedy

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility–I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it–and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

For what is probably the most historically groundbreaking use of parallelism in speech across American history, President JFK placed the weighty task of ‘asking what one can do for their country’ onto the shoulders of each American citizen. Using an air of firmness in his rhetoric by declaring his commitment to his countrymen, he urges each American to do the same for the broader, noble ideal of freedom for all. With his crucial interrogation of a citizen’s moral duty to his nation, President JFK truly made history.

15. Atoms for Peace Speech by Dwight Eisenhower

“To pause there would be to confirm the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world. To stop there would be to accept helplessly the probability of civilization destroyed, the annihilation of the irreplaceable heritage of mankind handed down to us from generation to generation, and the condemnation of mankind to begin all over again the age-old struggle upward from savagery towards decency, and right, and justice. Surely no sane member of the human race could discover victory in such desolation. Could anyone wish his name to be coupled by history with such human degradation and destruction?Occasional pages of history do record the faces of the “great destroyers”, but the whole book of history reveals mankind’s never-ending quest for peace and mankind’s God-given capacity to build. It is with the book of history, and not with isolated pages, that the United States will ever wish to be identified. My country wants to be constructive,not destructive. It wants agreements, not wars, among nations. It wants itself to live in freedom and in the confidence that the peoples of every other nation enjoy equally the right of choosing their own way of life. So my country’s purpose is to help us to move out of the dark chamber of horrors into the light, to find a way by which the minds of men, the hopes of men, the souls of men everywhere, can move forward towards peace and happiness and well-being.”

On a possibility as frightful and tense as nuclear war, President Eisenhower managed to convey the gravity of the world’s plight in his measured and persuasive speech centred on the greater good of mankind. Using rhetorical devices such as the three-part paratactical syntax which most world leaders are fond of for ingraining their words in the minds of their audience, he centers the discourse of the atomic bomb on those affected by such a world-changing decision in ‘the minds, hopes and souls of men everywhere’ – effectively putting the vivid image of millions of people’s fates at stake in the minds of his audience. Being able to make a topic as heavy and fraught with moral conflict as this as eloquent as he did, Eisenhower definitely ranks among some of the most skilled orators to date.

16. The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action by Audre Lorde

“I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am black, because I am myself, a black woman warrior poet doing my work, come to ask you, are you doing yours?”

Revolutionary writer, feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde first delivered this phenomenal speech at Lesbian and Literature panel of the Modern Language Association’s December 28, 1977 meeting, which went on to feature permanently in her writings for its sheer wisdom and truth. Her powerful writing and speech about living on the margins of society has enlightened millions of people discriminated across various intersections, confronting them with the reality that they must speak – since their ‘silence will not protect’ them from further marginalization. Through her illuminating words and oratory, she has reminded marginalized persons of the importance of their selfhood and the radical capacity for change they have in a world blighted by prejudice and division.

17. 1965 Cambridge Union Hall Speech by James Baldwin

“What is dangerous here is the turning away from – the turning away from – anything any white American says. The reason for the political hesitation, in spite of the Johnson landslide is that one has been betrayed by American politicians for so long. And I am a grown man and perhaps I can be reasoned with. I certainly hope I can be. But I don’t know, and neither does Martin Luther King, none of us know how to deal with those other people whom the white world has so long ignored, who don’t believe anything the white world says and don’t entirely believe anything I or Martin is saying. And one can’t blame them. You watch what has happened to them in less than twenty years.”

Baldwin’s invitation to the Cambridge Union Hall is best remembered for foregrounding the unflinching differences in white and African Americans’ ‘system of reality’ in everyday life. Raising uncomfortable truths about the insidious nature of racism post-civil war, he provides several nuggets of thought-provoking wisdom on the state of relations between the oppressed and their oppressors, and what is necessary to mediate such relations and destroy the exploitative thread of racist hatred. With great frankness, he admits to not having all the answers but provides hard-hitting wisdom on engagement to guide activists through confounding times nonetheless.

18. I Am Prepared to Die by Nelson Mandela

“Above all, My Lord, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy. But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs as it certainly must, it will not change that policy. This then is what the ANC is fighting. Our struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by our own suffering and our own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Apartheid is still considered one of these most devastating events of world history, and it would not have ended without the crucial effort and words of Nelson Mandela during his courageous political leadership. In this heartbreaking speech , he voices his utter devotion to the fight against institutionalised racism in African society – an ideal for which he was ‘prepared to die for’. Mandela continues to remind us today of his moral conviction in leading, wherein the world would likely to be a better place if all politicians had the same resolve and genuine commitment to human rights and the abolition of oppression as he did.

19. Critique on British Imperialism by General Aung San

“Do they form their observations by seeing the attendances at not very many cinemas and theatres of Rangoon? Do they judge this question of money circulation by paying a stray visit to a local bazaar? Do they know that cinemas and theatres are not true indicators, at least in Burma, of the people’s conditions? Do they know that there are many in this country who cannot think of going to these places by having to struggle for their bare existence from day to day? Do they know that those who nowadays patronise or frequent cinemas and theatres which exist only in Rangoon and a few big towns, belong generally to middle and upper classes and the very few of the many poor who can attend at all are doing so as a desperate form of relaxation just to make them forget their unsupportable existences for the while whatever may be the tomorrow that awaits them?”

Under British colonial rule, one of the most legendary nationalist leaders emerged from the ranks of the thousands of Burmese to boldly lead them towards independence, out of the exploitation and control under the British. General Aung San’s speech criticising British social, political and economic control of Burma continues to be scathing, articulate, and relevant – especially given his necessary goal of uniting the Burmese natives against their common oppressor. He successfully galvanised his people against the British, taking endless risks through nationalist speeches and demonstrations which gradually bore fruit in Burma’s independence.

20. Nobel Lecture by Mother Teresa

“I believe that we are not real social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world. For we are touching the Body Of Christ 24 hours. We have 24 hours in this presence, and so you and I. You too try to bring that presence of God in your family, for the family that prays together stays together. And I think that we in our family don’t need bombs and guns, to destroy to bring peace–just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world. There is so much suffering, so much hatred, so much misery, and we with our prayer, with our sacrifice are beginning at home. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. It is to God Almighty–how much we do it does not matter, because He is infinite, but how much love we put in that action. How much we do to Him in the person that we are serving.”

In contemporary culture, most people understand Mother Teresa to be the epitome of compassion and kindness. However, if one were to look closer at her speeches from the past, one would discover not merely her altruistic contributions, but her keen heart for social justice and the downtrodden. She wisely and gracefully remarks that ‘love begins at home’ from the individual actions of each person within their private lives, which accumulate into a life of goodness and charity. For this, her speeches served not just consolatory value or momentary relevance, as they still inform the present on how we can live lives worth living.

21. June 9 Speech to Martial Law Units by Deng Xiaoping

“This army still maintains the traditions of our old Red Army. What they crossed this time was in the true sense of the expression a political barrier, a threshold of life and death. This was not easy. This shows that the People’s Army is truly a great wall of iron and steel of the party and state. This shows that no matter how heavy our losses, the army, under the leadership of the party, will always remain the defender of the country, the defender of socialism, and the defender of the public interest. They are a most lovable people. At the same time, we should never forget how cruel our enemies are. We should have not one bit of forgiveness for them. The fact that this incident broke out as it did is very worthy of our pondering. It prompts us cool-headedly to consider the past and the future. Perhaps this bad thing will enable us to go ahead with reform and the open policy at a steadier and better — even a faster — pace, more speedily correct our mistakes, and better develop our strong points.”

Mere days before the 4 June 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Chinese Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping sat with six party elders (senior officials) and the three remaining members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the paramount decision-making body in China’s government. The meeting was organised to discuss the best course of action for restoring social and political order to China, given the sweeping economic reforms that had taken place in the past decade that inevitably resulted in some social resistance from the populace. Deng then gave this astute and well-regarded speech, outlining the political complexities in shutting down student protests given the context of reforms encouraging economic liberalization already taking place, as aligned with the students’ desires. It may not be the most rousing or inflammatory of speeches, but it was certainly persuasive in voicing the importance of taking a strong stand for the economic reforms Deng was implementing to benefit Chinese citizens in the long run. Today, China is an economic superpower, far from its war-torn developing country status before Deng’s leadership – thanks to his foresight in ensuring political stability would allow China to enjoy the fruits of the massive changes they adapted to.

22. Freedom or Death by Emmeline Pankhurst

“You won your freedom in America when you had the revolution, by bloodshed, by sacrificing human life. You won the civil war by the sacrifice of human life when you decided to emancipate the negro. You have left it to women in your land, the men of all civilised countries have left it to women, to work out their own salvation. That is the way in which we women of England are doing. Human life for us is sacred, but we say if any life is to be sacrificed it shall be ours; we won’t do it ourselves, but we will put the enemy in the position where they will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death. Now whether you approve of us or whether you do not, you must see that we have brought the question of women’s suffrage into a position where it is of first rate importance, where it can be ignored no longer. Even the most hardened politician will hesitate to take upon himself directly the responsibility of sacrificing the lives of women of undoubted honour, of undoubted earnestness of purpose. That is the political situation as I lay it before you today.”

In 1913 after Suffragette Emily Davison stepped in front of King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby and suffered fatal injuries, Emmeline Pankhurst delivered her speech to Connecticut as a call to action for people to support the suffragette movement. Her fortitude in delivering such a sobering speech on the state of women’s rights is worth remembering for its invaluable impact and contributions to the rights we enjoy in today’s world.

23. Quit India by Mahatma Gandhi

“We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery. Every true Congressman or woman will join the struggle with an inflexible determination not to remain alive to see the country in bondage and slavery. Let that be your pledge. Keep jails out of your consideration. If the Government keep me free, I will not put on the Government the strain of maintaining a large number of prisoners at a time, when it is in trouble. Let every man and woman live every moment of his or her life hereafter in the consciousness that he or she eats or lives for achieving freedom and will die, if need be, to attain that goal. Take a pledge, with God and your own conscience as witness, that you will no longer rest till freedom is achieved and will be prepared to lay down your lives in the attempt to achieve it. He who loses his life will gain it; he who will seek to save it shall lose it. Freedom is not for the coward or the faint-hearted.”

Naturally, the revolutionary activist Gandhi had to appear in this list for his impassioned anti-colonial speeches which rallied Indians towards independence. Famous for leading non-violent demonstrations, his speeches were a key element in gathering Indians of all backgrounds together for the common cause of eliminating their colonial masters. His speeches were resolute, eloquent, and courageous, inspiring the hope and admiration of many not just within India, but around the world.

24. 1974 National Book Award Speech by Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde

“The statement I am going to read was prepared by three of the women nominated for the National Book Award for poetry, with the agreement that it would be read by whichever of us, if any, was chosen.We, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Alice Walker, together accept this award in the name of all the women whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world, and in the name of those who, like us, have been tolerated as token women in this culture, often at great cost and in great pain. We believe that we can enrich ourselves more in supporting and giving to each other than by competing against each other; and that poetry—if it is poetry—exists in a realm beyond ranking and comparison. We symbolically join together here in refusing the terms of patriarchal competition and declaring that we will share this prize among us, to be used as best we can for women. We appreciate the good faith of the judges for this award, but none of us could accept this money for herself, nor could she let go unquestioned the terms on which poets are given or denied honor and livelihood in this world, especially when they are women. We dedicate this occasion to the struggle for self-determination of all women, of every color, identification, or derived class: the poet, the housewife, the lesbian, the mathematician, the mother, the dishwasher, the pregnant teen-ager, the teacher, the grandmother, the prostitute, the philosopher, the waitress, the women who will understand what we are doing here and those who will not understand yet; the silent women whose voices have been denied us, the articulate women who have given us strength to do our work.”

Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker wrote this joint speech to be delivered by Adrienne Rich at the 1974 National Book Awards, based on their suspicions that the first few African American lesbian women to be nominated for the awards would be snubbed in favour of a white woman nominee. Their suspicions were confirmed, and Adrienne Rich delivered this socially significant speech in solidarity with her fellow nominees, upholding the voices of the ‘silent women whose voices have been denied’.

25. Speech to 20th Congress of the CPSU by Nikita Khruschev

“Considering the question of the cult of an individual, we must first of all show everyone what harm this caused to the interests of our Party. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had always stressed the Party’s role and significance in the direction of the socialist government of workers and peasants; he saw in this the chief precondition for a successful building of socialism in our country. Pointing to the great responsibility of the Bolshevik Party, as ruling Party of the Soviet state, Lenin called for the most meticulous observance of all norms of Party life; he called for the realization of the principles of collegiality in the direction of the Party and the state. Collegiality of leadership flows from the very nature of our Party, a Party built on the principles of democratic centralism. “This means,” said Lenin, “that all Party matters are accomplished by all Party members – directly or through representatives – who, without any exceptions, are subject to the same rules; in addition, all administrative members, all directing collegia, all holders of Party positions are elective, they must account for their activities and are recallable.””

This speech is possibly the most famed Russian speech for its status as a ‘secret’ speech delivered only to the CPSU at the time, which was eventually revealed to the public. Given the unchallenged political legacy and cult of personality which Stalin left in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khruschev’s speech condemning the authoritarian means Stalin had resorted to to consolidate power as un-socialist was an important mark in Russian history.

26. The Struggle for Human Rights by Eleanor Roosevelt

“It is my belief, and I am sure it is also yours, that the struggle for democracy and freedom is a critical struggle, for their preservation is essential to the great objective of the United Nations to maintain international peace and security. Among free men the end cannot justify the means. We know the patterns of totalitarianism — the single political party, the control of schools, press, radio, the arts, the sciences, and the church to support autocratic authority; these are the age-old patterns against which men have struggled for three thousand years. These are the signs of reaction, retreat, and retrogression. The United Nations must hold fast to the heritage of freedom won by the struggle of its people; it must help us to pass it on to generations to come. The development of the ideal of freedom and its translation into the everyday life of the people in great areas of the earth is the product of the efforts of many peoples. It is the fruit of a long tradition of vigorous thinking and courageous action. No one race and on one people can claim to have done all the work to achieve greater dignity for human beings and great freedom to develop human personality. In each generation and in each country there must be a continuation of the struggle and new steps forward must be taken since this is preeminently a field in which to stand still is to retreat.”

Eleanor Roosevelt has been among the most well-loved First Ladies for good reason – her eloquence and gravitas in delivering every speech convinced everyone of her suitability for the oval office. In this determined and articulate speech , she outlines the fundamental values that form the bedrock of democracy, urging the rest of the world to uphold human rights regardless of national ideology and interests.

27. The Ballot or The Bullet by Malcolm X

“And in this manner, the organizations will increase in number and in quantity and in quality, and by August, it is then our intention to have a black nationalist convention which will consist of delegates from all over the country who are interested in the political, economic and social philosophy of black nationalism. After these delegates convene, we will hold a seminar; we will hold discussions; we will listen to everyone. We want to hear new ideas and new solutions and new answers. And at that time, if we see fit then to form a black nationalist party, we’ll form a black nationalist party. If it’s necessary to form a black nationalist army, we’ll form a black nationalist army. It’ll be the ballot or the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death.”

Inarguably, the revolutionary impact Malcolm X’s fearless oratory had was substantial in his time as a radical anti-racist civil rights activist. His speeches’ emancipatory potential put forth his ‘theory of rhetorical action’ where he urges Black Americans to employ both the ballot and the bullet, strategically without being dependent on the other should the conditions of oppression change. A crucial leader in the fight for civil rights, he opened the eyes of thousands of Black Americans, politicising and convincing them of the necessity of fighting for their democratic rights against white supremacists.

28. Living the Revolution by Gloria Steinem

“The challenge to all of us, and to you men and women who are graduating today, is to live a revolution, not to die for one. There has been too much killing, and the weapons are now far too terrible. This revolution has to change consciousness, to upset the injustice of our current hierarchy by refusing to honor it, and to live a life that enforces a new social justice. Because the truth is none of us can be liberated if other groups are not.”

In an unexpected commencement speech delivered at Vassar College in 1970, Gloria Steinem boldly makes a call to action on behalf of marginalized groups in need of liberation to newly graduated students. She proclaimed it the year of Women’s Liberation and forcefully highlighted the need for a social revolution to ‘upset the injustice of the current hierarchy’ in favour of human rights – echoing the hard-hitting motto on social justice, ‘until all of us are free, none of us are free’.

29. The Last Words of Harvey Milk by Harvey Milk

“I cannot prevent some people from feeling angry and frustrated and mad in response to my death, but I hope they will take the frustration and madness and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I would hope that they would take the power and I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out, stand up and let the world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody could imagine. I urge them to do that, urge them to come out. Only that way will we start to achieve our rights. … All I ask is for the movement to continue, and if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door…”

As the first openly gay elected official in the history of California, Harvey Milk’s entire political candidature was in itself a radical statement against the homophobic status quo at the time. Given the dangerous times he was in as an openly gay man, he anticipated that he would be assassinated eventually in his political career. As such, these are some of his last words which show the utter devotion he had to campaigning against homophobia while representing the American people, voicing his heartbreaking wish for the bullet that would eventually kill him to ‘destroy every closet door’.

30. Black Power Address at UC Berkeley by Stokely Carmichael

“Now we are now engaged in a psychological struggle in this country, and that is whether or not black people will have the right to use the words they want to use without white people giving their sanction to it; and that we maintain, whether they like it or not, we gonna use the word “Black Power” — and let them address themselves to that; but that we are not going to wait for white people to sanction Black Power. We’re tired waiting; every time black people move in this country, they’re forced to defend their position before they move. It’s time that the people who are supposed to be defending their position do that. That’s white people. They ought to start defending themselves as to why they have oppressed and exploited us.”

A forceful and impressive orator, Stokely Carmichael was among those at the forefront of the civil rights movement, who was a vigorous socialist organizer as well. He led the Black Power movement wherein he gave this urgent, influential speech that propelled Black Americans forward in their fight for constitutional rights in the 1960s.

31. Speech on Vietnam by Lyndon Johnson

“The true peace-keepers are those men who stand out there on the DMZ at this very hour, taking the worst that the enemy can give. The true peace-keepers are the soldiers who are breaking the terrorist’s grip around the villages of Vietnam—the civilians who are bringing medical care and food and education to people who have already suffered a generation of war. And so I report to you that we are going to continue to press forward. Two things we must do. Two things we shall do. First, we must not mislead the enemy. Let him not think that debate and dissent will produce wavering and withdrawal. For I can assure you they won’t. Let him not think that protests will produce surrender. Because they won’t. Let him not think that he will wait us out. For he won’t. Second, we will provide all that our brave men require to do the job that must be done. And that job is going to be done. These gallant men have our prayers-have our thanks—have our heart-felt praise—and our deepest gratitude. Let the world know that the keepers of peace will endure through every trial—and that with the full backing of their countrymen, they are going to prevail.”

During some of the most harrowing periods of human history, the Vietnam War, American soldiers were getting soundly defeated by the Vietnamese in guerrilla warfare. President Lyndon Johnson then issued this dignified, consolatory speech to encourage patriotism and support for the soldiers putting their lives on the line for the nation.

32. A Whisper of AIDS by Mary Fisher

“We may take refuge in our stereotypes, but we cannot hide there long, because HIV asks only one thing of those it attacks. Are you human? And this is the right question. Are you human? Because people with HIV have not entered some alien state of being. They are human. They have not earned cruelty, and they do not deserve meanness. They don’t benefit from being isolated or treated as outcasts. Each of them is exactly what God made: a person; not evil, deserving of our judgment; not victims, longing for our pity ­­ people, ready for  support and worthy of compassion. We must be consistent if we are to be believed. We cannot love justice and ignore prejudice, love our children and fear to teach them. Whatever our role as parent or policymaker, we must act as eloquently as we speak ­­ else we have no integrity. My call to the nation is a plea for awareness. If you believe you are safe, you are in danger. Because I was not hemophiliac, I was not at risk. Because I was not gay, I was not at risk. Because I did not inject drugs, I was not at risk. The lesson history teaches is this: If you believe you are safe, you are at risk. If you do not see this killer stalking your children, look again. There is no family or community, no race or religion, no place left in America that is safe. Until we genuinely embrace this message, we are a nation at risk.”

Back when AIDS research was still undeveloped, the stigma of contracting HIV was even more immense than it is today. A celebrated artist, author and speaker, Mary Fisher became an outspoken activist for those with HIV/AIDS, persuading people to extend compassion to the population with HIV instead of stigmatizing them – as injustice has a way of coming around to people eventually. Her bold act of speaking out for the community regardless of the way they contracted the disease, their sexual orientation or social group, was an influential move in advancing the human rights of those with HIV and spreading awareness on the discrimination they face.

33. Freedom from Fear by Aung San Suu Kyi

“The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation’s development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear. Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society. Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear.”

Famous for her resoluteness and fortitude in campaigning for democracy in Burma despite being put under house arrest by the military government, Aung San Suu Kyi’s speeches have been widely touted as inspirational. In this renowned speech of hers, she delivers a potent message to Burmese to ‘liberate their minds from apathy and fear’ in the struggle for freedom and human rights in the country. To this day, she continues to tirelessly champion the welfare and freedom of Burmese in a state still overcome by vestiges of authoritarian rule.

34. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace

“Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

Esteemed writer David Foster Wallace gave a remarkably casual yet wise commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 on the importance of learning to think beyond attaining a formal education. He encouraged hundreds of students to develop freedom of thought, a heart of sacrificial care for those in need of justice, and a consciousness that would serve them in discerning the right choices to make within a status quo that is easy to fall in line with. His captivating speech on what it meant to truly be ‘educated’ tugged at the hearts of many young and critical minds striving to achieve their dreams and change the world.

35. Questioning the Universe by Stephen Hawking

“This brings me to the last of the big questions: the future of the human race. If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and continue. But we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space. The answers to these big questions show that we have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space. That is why I am in favor of manned — or should I say, personned — space flight.”

Extraordinary theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking was a considerable influence upon modern physics and scientific research at large, inspiring people regardless of physical ability to aspire towards expanding knowledge in the world. In his speech on Questioning the Universe, he speaks of the emerging currents and issues in the scientific world like that of outer space, raising and answering big questions that have stumped great thinkers for years.

36. 2008 Democratic National Convention Speech by Michelle Obama

“I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history — knowing that my piece of the American dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me. All of them driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work. The same conviction that drives the men and women I’ve met all across this country: People who work the day shift, kiss their kids goodnight, and head out for the night shift — without disappointment, without regret — that goodnight kiss a reminder of everything they’re working for. The military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table. The servicemen and women who love this country so much, they leave those they love most to defend it. The young people across America serving our communities — teaching children, cleaning up neighborhoods, caring for the least among us each and every day. People like Hillary Clinton, who put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, so that our daughters — and sons — can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher. People like Joe Biden, who’s never forgotten where he came from and never stopped fighting for folks who work long hours and face long odds and need someone on their side again. All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do — that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be. That is the thread that connects our hearts. That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack’s journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope. That is why I love this country.”

Ever the favourite modern First Lady of America, Michelle Obama has delivered an abundance of iconic speeches in her political capacity, never forgetting to foreground the indomitable human spirit embodied in American citizens’ everyday lives and efforts towards a better world. The Obamas might just have been the most articulate couple of rhetoricians of their time, making waves as the first African American president and First Lady while introducing important policies in their period of governance.

37. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

“I’m not talking about blind optimism here — the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope — Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.”

Now published into a book, Barack Obama’s heart-capturing personal story of transformational hope was first delivered as a speech on the merits of patriotic optimism and determination put to the mission of concrete change. He has come to be known as one of the most favoured and inspiring presidents in American history, and arguably the most skilled orators ever.

38. “Be Your Own Story” by Toni Morrison

“But I’m not going to talk anymore about the future because I’m hesitant to describe or predict because I’m not even certain that it exists. That is to say, I’m not certain that somehow, perhaps, a burgeoning ménage a trois of political interests, corporate interests and military interests will not prevail and literally annihilate an inhabitable, humane future. Because I don’t think we can any longer rely on separation of powers, free speech, religious tolerance or unchallengeable civil liberties as a matter of course. That is, not while finite humans in the flux of time make decisions of infinite damage. Not while finite humans make infinite claims of virtue and unassailable power that are beyond their competence, if not their reach. So, no happy talk about the future. … Because the past is already in debt to the mismanaged present. And besides, contrary to what you may have heard or learned, the past is not done and it is not over, it’s still in process, which is another way of saying that when it’s critiqued, analyzed, it yields new information about itself. The past is already changing as it is being reexamined, as it is being listened to for deeper resonances. Actually it can be more liberating than any imagined future if you are willing to identify its evasions, its distortions, its lies, and are willing to unleash its secrets.”

Venerated author and professor Toni Morrison delivered an impressively articulate speech at Wellesley College in 2004 to new graduates, bucking the trend by discussing the importance of the past in informing current and future ways of living. With her brilliance and eloquence, she blew the crowd away and renewed in them the capacity for reflection upon using the past as a talisman to guide oneself along the journey of life.

39. Nobel Speech by Malala Yousafzai

“Dear brothers and sisters, the so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don’t. Why is it that countries which we call “strong” are so powerful in creating wars but so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so difficult? As we are living in the modern age, the 21st century and we all believe that nothing is impossible. We can reach the moon and maybe soon will land on Mars. Then, in this, the 21st century, we must be determined that our dream of quality education for all will also come true. So let us bring equality, justice and peace for all. Not just the politicians and the world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. It is our duty. So we must work … and not wait. I call upon my fellow children to stand up around the world. Dear sisters and brothers, let us become the first generation to decide to be the last. The empty classrooms, the lost childhoods, wasted potential-let these things end with us.”

At a mere 16 years of age, Malala Yousafzai gave a speech on the severity of the state of human rights across the world, and wowed the world with her passion for justice at her tender age. She displayed tenacity and fearlessness speaking about her survival of an assassination attempt for her activism for gender equality in the field of education. A model of courage to us all, her speech remains an essential one in the fight for human rights in the 21st century.

40. Final Commencement Speech by Michelle Obama

“If you are a person of faith, know that religious diversity is a great American tradition, too. In fact, that’s why people first came to this country — to worship freely. And whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh — these religions are teaching our young people about justice, and compassion, and honesty. So I want our young people to continue to learn and practice those values with pride. You see, our glorious diversity — our diversities of faiths and colors and creeds — that is not a threat to who we are, it makes us who we are. So the young people here and the young people out there: Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don’t matter, or like you don’t have a place in our American story — because you do. And you have a right to be exactly who you are. But I also want to be very clear: This right isn’t just handed to you. No, this right has to be earned every single day. You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms. … It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country. Our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, then we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may place on us. The hope that when people see us for who we truly are, maybe, just maybe they, too, will be inspired to rise to their best possible selves.”

Finally, we have yet another speech by Michelle Obama given in her final remarks as First Lady – a tear-inducing event for many Americans and even people around the world. In this emotional end to her political tenure, she gives an empowering, hopeful, expressive speech to young Americans, exhorting them to take hold of its future in all their diversity and work hard at being their best possible selves.

Amidst the bleak era of our current time with Trump as president of the USA, not only Michelle Obama, but all 40 of these amazing speeches can serve as sources of inspiration and hope to everyone – regardless of their identity or ambitions. After hearing these speeches, which one’s your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!

Article Written By: Kai Xin Koh

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Nobel Peace Prize 2021 - Nobel Lectures and speeches

Read and download the Nobel Lectures and speeches from the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony 2021

Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen Presentation speech - Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2020 World Food Programme

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Nobel Lecture -  Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2020 World Food Programme, delivered by David Beasley

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Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen Presentation speech Nobel Peace Prize Laureates 2021, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov

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Nobel Lecture, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2021, Maria Ressa

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Nobel Lecture, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2021, Dmitry Muratov

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Inside the White House Scramble to Broker a Deal in Gaza

The flurry of actions underscores how fluid the situation in the region is as President Biden and his team try to ultimately end the war that has devastated Gaza.

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By Peter Baker

Reporting from Washington

Over the course of a few hours, the news from the Middle East came into the White House Situation Room fast and furious.

Israel orders 100,000 civilians out of Rafah in prelude to invasion.

Hamas “accepts” cease-fire deal, potentially precluding invasion.

Israel conducts strikes against Rafah, possibly opening invasion.

The war-is-on-off-on-again developments on Monday left White House officials scrambling to track what was happening and what it all meant. At the end of the day, they came to believe, each of the moves signaled less than originally met the eye, but reflected efforts to gain leverage at the negotiating table with a clear resolution not yet in sight.

In fact, Hamas did not “accept” a cease-fire deal so much as make a counteroffer to the proposal on the table previously blessed by the United States and Israel — a counteroffer that was not itself deemed acceptable but a sign of progress. At the same time, Israel’s strikes in Rafah evidently were not the start of the long-threatened major operation but targeted retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks that killed four Israeli soldiers over the weekend — and along with the warning to civilians, a way to increase pressure on Hamas negotiators.

The flurry of actions underscored how fluid the situation in the region is as President Biden and his team try to broker a deal that they hope will ultimately end the war that has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians, inflamed the region and provoked unrest on American college campuses. Over the last few days, the talks went from high hopes that a deal was close, to a fresh impasse that seemed to leave them on the verge of collapse, to a renewed initiative by Hamas to get them back on track.

“Biden is continuing all efforts to thread multiple needles at once,” said Mara Rudman, a former deputy Middle East special envoy under President Barack Obama who is now at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. The president is still warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that a “Rafah ground invasion is a terrible idea,” she said, while also “pressuring Hamas in every way possible to get hostages out and more humanitarian aid in.”

Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu on Monday to fill him in on the American assessment of where the cease-fire talks stand and to again press the Israeli leader to hold off any full-fledged attack on Rafah. The president also hosted lunch at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan, who like other Arab leaders is eager to bring the war to an end.

The past two weeks have been as intense and suspenseful diplomatically as any since Hamas mounted a major terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. After months of stalemated talks, Israel came back on April 26 with a proposal that American officials believed changed the dynamics and offered a serious chance for agreement.

Under the first phase of the proposal, Israel would halt the war for 42 days and release hundreds of Palestinians held in its prisons while Hamas would release 33 hostages, specifically women, older men and the sick and wounded.

The number 33 was an increase from 18 proposed by Hamas but lower than the 40 originally demanded by Israel, in large part because Israeli officials came to understand that there were not more than 33 hostages who met the criteria, according to people informed about the discussions who insisted on anonymity to describe sensitive talks. Indeed, Hamas revealed to the Israelis on Monday that the 33 would include the remains of hostages who have died as well as those still living.

In addition, Israel would pull its forces out of populated areas of Gaza and permit Gazans to return to the northern part of the enclave once conditions were met; to that end, the cease-fire would enable a large increase in the flow of humanitarian aid. In trying to call Hamas’s bluff, the people informed on the talks said, the Israelis virtually cut and pasted some of the language from a Hamas proposal in March and put it into theirs.

During the six-week cease-fire, the two sides would then work out plans for a second phase, which would involve another 42-day halt to hostilities and the release of more hostages. In this phase, the hostages to be released would include Israeli soldiers, a category of captives that Hamas has always been more resistant to giving up. To get over that hurdle, the Israelis agreed to release a larger ratio of Palestinian prisoners for each hostage returned home.

The Israeli concessions left American, Egyptian and Qatari intermediaries optimistic that an agreement could be reached. But a week went by without a clear response from Hamas, in part perhaps because of the challenges of communicating with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas military leader believed to be hiding in the tunnels of Gaza.

When negotiators arrived in Cairo on Friday, the Israelis did not send a delegation, which was interpreted by some critics of Mr. Netanyahu as a snub. But Israeli and American officials denied that, saying that no Israeli delegation was needed at that stage because Israel had made its proposal and was waiting for a Hamas response.

Hamas’s response over the weekend frustrated the intermediaries because it rejected some of the very language that it had previously proposed and that had been adopted by the Israelis, according to the people briefed on the talks. The American side declared the new Hamas position unacceptable, and suggested that if Hamas did not really want a deal, perhaps the negotiations were done. But Hamas indicated that it was not trying to torpedo the talks and would come back with a new version.

That was the counteroffer that Hamas forwarded on Monday. The Israelis and Americans did not find it acceptable, but believed that it left room for further negotiations. Talks are expected to resume in Cairo at a technical level, probably on Wednesday, to go through the details. This time, Israel has agreed to send a delegation to go over the Hamas counteroffer.

The Israeli actions in Rafah on Monday could either ratchet up the pressure on Hamas to make a deal or sabotage the talks, according to analysts. The strikes focused on targets in the border areas of Rafah, rather than the main population areas, but could foreshadow what is to come.

It was not entirely clear to veterans of the region whether either side necessarily wants an agreement. Jon B. Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said it was possible that Hamas thought that “precipitating a massive Israeli operation in Rafah would be worth the cost, because it would isolate Israel globally and deepen the U.S.-Israel divide.”

At the same time, he said, it could be that Mr. Netanyahu is “seeking a trifecta” with the strikes on Monday: pushing Hamas to give in, showing the Israeli public that he did hit Rafah as promised and getting credit from the Biden administration for not mounting the full-scale assault that Washington fears would result in a civilian catastrophe.

“There are secrets here I just don’t know,” Mr. Alterman said. “At the same time, no side knows the others’ breaking point, and I worry that no side accurately understands the others’ assessments.”

Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and former adviser to Palestinian leaders during past peace negotiations, said he remained skeptical that Mr. Netanyahu actually wanted a cease-fire deal because of his own domestic politics.

“I don’t believe moves on or in Rafah, including evacuation orders, are just a negotiating tactic,” he said. “Netanyahu needs the Rafah operation to remain in power and to appease the fanatics in his coalition.” He added, “Bottom line, Netanyahu has little to gain from a cease-fire deal and a lot to lose.”

That distrust on both sides, of course, makes any agreement all the more elusive. While the two sides seem reconciled on the first phase cease-fire and hostage release, there are still a number of other differences between the two competing proposals, according to the people briefed on them. But the most fundamental dispute is whether an agreement would ultimately end the war.

Negotiators have tried to finesse that with a time-honored diplomatic tactic of employing language that is vague enough to be interpreted by each side as it chooses. Under the agreement, the two sides would use the temporary cease-fire to work out the return of “sustainable calm.” Hamas wants “sustainable calm” to mean a permanent cessation of hostilities, while Israel does not want to make that explicit a commitment.

American officials are content to leave the definition of “sustainable calm” a little fuzzy, but are banking on the idea that once the guns stop firing for six and then potentially 12 weeks, the momentum for a more lasting peace will be inexorable. That is why they are devoting so much energy to the coming days.

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker

Our Coverage of the Israel-Hamas War

News and Analysis

The flow of aid to Gaza through border crossings has come to a near-total stop , first closed off by Israel and then further restricted, officials say, by Egypt.

A White House spokesman told Israel that an assault on Rafah, where more than one million people are sheltering, would not eradicate Hamas . For months, the U.S. has urged Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians .

The main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said that it had temporarily closed its headquarters  in East Jerusalem for the safety of its staff after parts of the compound were set on fire following weeks of attacks.

A Presidential Move: Ronald Reagan also used  the power of American arms to influence  Israeli war policy. The comparison underscores how much the politics of Israel have changed in the United States since the 1980s.

Netanyahu ' s Concerns: Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, under pressure from all sides, is trying to reassure his many domestic, military and diplomatic critics. Here’s a look at what he is confronting .

Al Jazeera Shutdown: The influential Arab news network says it will continue reporting from Gaza and the West Bank, but its departure from Israel mark s a new low in its long-strained history with the country .

Hobbling Education for Years: Most of Gaza’s schools, including all 12 of its universities, have severe damage that makes them unusable , which could harm an entire generation of students, the U.N. and others say.

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How to return to the art of living together in a truly human way? Pope Francis responds in speech

Hearing to the participants in the World Meeting on Human Fraternity.

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(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 05.11.2024).- On May 10th and 11th, the second edition of the World Meeting on Human Fraternity (WMHF) was held in Rome, organized by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation under the name #BeHuman.

As part of the program, men and women gathered at 12 different iconic sites in Rome (Palazzo del Campidoglio, Palazzo della Cancelleria, l’Accademia dei Lincei, Palazzo Rospigliosi, Cnel, the Salone d’onore del Coni, etc.) to address various topics related to human fraternity. The event was notable for the participation of 30 Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

On the morning of Saturday, May 11th, they were received in a special audience by Pope Francis in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace. Here is the translation into English of the Pope’s speech.

Photo: Vatican Media

I welcome you and thank you for your presence here. You have come from many parts of the world to take part in the World Meeting on Human Fraternity. I thank the Fratelli Tutti Foundation, which seeks to promote the principles set forth in the Encyclical, “in order to encourage initiatives linked to spirituality, art, education and dialogue with the world, around Saint Peter’s Basilica and in the embrace of its colonnade” (Chirograph, 8 December 2021).

In a world facing the fires of conflict, you have come together with the intention of reaffirming your “no” to war and “yes” to peace, bearing witness to the humanity that unites us and makes us recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters, in the mutual gift of our respective cultural differences.

In this regard, I am reminded of a famous address of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said: “We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers” (Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1964).  Indeed, that is true. Let us ask ourselves, then: how can we, concretely, return to building up the art of a coexistence that is truly humane?

I would like to go back to the key disposition proposed in Fratelli tutti:  compassion. In the Gospel (cf. 10:25-37), Jesus tells the parable of a Samaritan who, moved by compassion, approaches a Jew whom robbers have left half-dead by the side of the road. Let us look at these two men. Their cultures were at odds, their histories different and contentious, but one became a brother to the other the moment he allowed himself to be guided by the compassion he felt for him. We could say that he allowed himself to be drawn to Jesus present in that wounded man. It is like the poet who, in one of his works, has Saint Francis of Assisi say: “The Lord is where your brothers are” (É. LECLERC, La sapienza di un povero).

In the afternoon you will meet at twelve points in Vatican City and Rome, to manifest your goal of creating an outgoing movement of fraternity. In this context, the working groups that have been preparing over the past few months will present some proposals to civil society, centred on the dignity of the human person, in order to craft sound policies, based on the principle of fraternity, which “in turn enhances freedom and equality” ( Fratelli tutti , 103). I am pleased by this choice and encourage you to go forward in your work of silent sowing. From it can come a Charter of Humanity, which includes, along with rights, the behaviours and practical reasons for what makes us more human.

I urge you not to be discouraged, because “persistent and courageous dialogue does not make headlines, but quietly helps the world to live much better than we imagine” ( Frantelli tutti , 198).

In particular, I would like to thank the group of distinguished Nobel Laureates present, both for the Declaration on Human Fraternity drafted on 10 June last year and for your commitment this year in reconstructing a grammar of humanity, on which to base choices and behaviour. I encourage you to move forward, to build up this spirituality of fraternity and to promote, through diplomatic activity, the role of multilateral bodies.

Dear brothers and sisters, war is a deception – war is always a defeat –, as is the idea of international security based on the deterrent of fear. This too is a deception. To ensure lasting peace, we must return to a recognition of our common humanity and place fraternity at the centre of peoples’ lives. Only in this way will we succeed in developing a model of coexistence capable of giving the human family a future. Political peace needs peace of hearts, so that people can come together in the confidence that life always overcomes all forms of death.

Dear friends, in greeting you I am thinking also of the embrace that will be shared this evening, as it was last year, by so many young people. Let us look at them and learn from them, for, as the Gospel teaches us, unless “you become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3).  Let us all make this embrace a commitment in our lives and a prophetic gesture of love.

Thank you for what you do! I am close to you and I ask you to pray for me. Now, all together and in silence, let us ask and receive the blessing of God.

Thank you for reading our content. If you would like to receive ZENIT’s daily e-mail news, you can subscribe for free through this link .

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Peace, a word in decline in Russia

The nation’s leaders do not want an end to the conflict in ukraine, understood as compromise, but rather a victory, understood as the imposition of their own agenda.

The word peace was a key element in the official rhetoric of the Soviet Union , and it reflected a sincere feeling among the inhabitants of that country, which had lost tens of millions of lives after being invaded by Hitler in 1941. The word peace was present in the private and the public lives of the Soviet citizens who, on holidays, toasted to peace inside their homes with their families and friends and who, on the occasion of International Labor Day on May 1, went out into the streets chanting the slogan “Peace, Work, May” (in that order).

Even after the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, whenever one discussed negative events with a Russian, a Ukrainian or a Belarusian citizen — all of whom carried memories or remembered stories about the war — the speaker was likely to be cut off with the following exclamation: “As long as there is no war!”, thus indicating that this was the worst thing that could possibly happen to someone, much worse than any personal misfortune.

In the Soviet use of the word peace, there were certainly some nuances, and official representatives added a dose of opportunism to the rejection of the horror left behind by the war. Made official in institutions such as the Peace Committee, in slogans and in rhetoric, it served to justify the participation of the USSR in the arms race with the United States, which it presented as an instrument to achieve a state of peace, understood as an indisputable goal. The disarmament promoted by the presidents of Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev, and of the United States, Ronald Reagan , in the 1980s was preceded by massive international pacifist demonstrations against the installation of missiles in Europe, and the agreements reached by those leaders were steps towards peace.

Today the situation is different. The word peace and its meaning have been devalued in a process of global degradation that not only affects Russia, a country where the phenomenon has its particular characteristics related to the war in Ukraine. Russian leaders do not want peace understood as a compromise, but rather a victory, understood as the imposition of their own agenda. Since 2022, Russians can be arrested and sentenced to up to seven years behind bars for “discrediting the army,” a crime of ambiguous interpretation that can affect those who declare themselves in favor of peace: 4,440 people were fined in 2022 and another 2,361 in 2023, according to judicial statistics. In the second year of the war, 50 individuals were tried criminally and nine of them were sentenced to two years in prison.

The fear of peace has reached absurd limits. The activist Konstantin Goldman was arrested in April 2022 for standing in the gardens attached to the Kremlin while holding a copy of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, and in December 2023 the police asked a bookstore in Saint Petersburg to remove a sticker with the word peace that had been on display in the shop window for more than a year. So it is not surprising that after raising awareness about the risks of the word peace, in the popular marches on the occasion of Labor Day this year in Russia, the term had disappeared from the classic slogan, “Peace, Work, May,” now reduced to “Work, May.” In different places, the word peace was replaced by krut (translatable in that context as super or cool), according to journalists and spectators. Since 2022, Russian officials have been evasive when they receive messages wishing for peace, for example, for the New Year. A Russian friend says that when an official with whom he had a relationship congratulated him on his birthday, he responded: “You’d better wish me peace.” After a moment of silence, the official added curtly: “Peace, only after victory!”

Even in the Orthodox churches of Russia today, people pray for victory, and there is a new prayer that was released by Patriarch Kirill in honor of Holy Russia. Any priests who have dared to replace the word victory with peace are suffering reprisals and being removed from religious services. Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin made it clear that he does not want peace, even in the form of advice. This much was experienced by four senior officials from various international policy institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who were among the 126 national and foreign experts who signed an open letter in favor of a cessation of hostilities, that is, in favor of the peace. By adding their names, Alexey Gromyko, director of the Europe Institute; Alexandr Panov, former deputy foreign minister of Russia; Sergei Rogov, academic director of the U.S.-Canada Institute; and Alexandr Nikitin, director of the Euro-Atlantic Security center at MGIMO [State Institute of International Relations], were excluded from an advisory body, Russia’s Security Council, by Putin’s decree.

The four respected experts were not dissidents, but their natural instinct was to seek a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian conflict; that is to say, they acted in the spirit that emerged from World War II . Meanwhile, the Kremlin remains impassive in the face of the atrocious verbal aggressiveness of people like the businessman Konstantin Malofeev and the philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, or the incendiary rhetoric of television propagandists who demand the annihilation of the enemy. The war in Ukraine continues to enjoy broad social support in Russia. In January of this year, 77% of Russians supported (fully or partially) the action of their Armed Forces, and only 16% were opposed, according to a survey by the Levada center. The poll showed that 52% were in favor of peace talks and 40% were in favor of continuing military action. Previous data indicated that, the vast majority, in favor of peace, wanted it without giving up territorial conquests.

Now that the 79th anniversary of the end of World War II is being commemorated, it would be desirable to return to the lessons of that war without waiting for new horrors to unfold, just as it would be desirable for peace not to be synonymous with victory at any price, as the Russian leaders are proposing after deforming and privatizing the pain and sacrifices that Russia shared with Ukraine and other republics of the Soviet Union.

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Opinion How Doris Kearns Goodwin helped her husband make peace with his own history

Late in life, Dick Goodwin rediscovered what the 1960s were all about.

Early in 2014, I phoned Doris Kearns Goodwin to ask her help with a series of stories I was writing about the 50th anniversary of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society .

I was hoping that America’s most beloved historian — who had worked in LBJ’s White House and then assisted him in writing his memoirs — could help me untangle the knotty legacy of America’s 36th president.

Doris told me I was talking to the wrong Goodwin.

She asked whether I was aware that her husband, Richard N. Goodwin, had drafted the May 1964 University of Michigan commencement speech in which Johnson had first laid out his vision for the Great Society.

“Well, then,” she said brightly, “you’ve got to come to our house!”

Doris, it turns out, had her own reasons for extending that invitation. In her notes about our conversation, which she recently shared with me, she recalled thinking: “Hooray. Maybe this will buoy Dick’s spirits.”

So came about one of the most remarkable days I have ever spent as a journalist. I arrived at the doorstep of the Goodwins’ 19th-century farmhouse in Concord, Mass., on the crisp morning of April 19, 2014. Room after room was lined with books, about 10,000 of them in all, lovingly arranged by subject.

We retreated to Dick’s study, where he, Doris and his research assistant Deb Colby had laid out a treasure trove for me to see: boxes of speech drafts and confidential memos and policy plans. Dick settled into a comfortable chair and began to share the stories behind them.

Transfixed by all of this, I did not discern that something more complex was going on as we followed that paper trail back half a century — and that there was a shadow in that room I could not see.

No one knows better than Doris, who is renowned for chronicling the lives of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and other great figures, that the lens of history has the power to reveal truths not always apparent in their own times.

But for her, this trip back 50 years was a personal endeavor. She was on a mission to help her husband, then in his early 80s, relive his own history, starting from the beginning, so he could better understand how the idealism of his youth had turned to disillusionment. As Dick approached the end of his life, Doris wanted him to understand — and to believe — that he and his work had helped change the course of America.

“That’s why those boxes mattered so much,” she told me. “It was the beginning of a process of just emotionally understanding what he obviously rationally understood, but just feeling that this was part of him and the Great Society was really important. And it made historic differences in the country.”

That journey and the late-in-life serenity it finally brought to her husband is the subject of Doris’s new book, “ An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s ,” which debuted at No. 1 on both the New York Times and Washington Post nonfiction bestseller lists. It is a tale tinged with sadness. This narrative of what Doris has called “our last great adventure together” was supposed to be Dick’s to write. But with his death of cancer in 2018 at the age of 86, his story fell to Doris to tell.

Dick Goodwin was a rumpled, wild-haired wunderkind. First in his class at Harvard Law School. A clerk for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. A congressional investigator who helped uncover the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s. Still in his 20s when he joined the small band of advisers aboard John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign plane, the Caroline.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger called Dick “the supreme generalist,” capable of any task he was called upon to do, though with an intensity and abrasiveness that earned him enemies. Where Dick made himself most indispensable was as a brilliant speechwriter. He was one of the few Kennedy loyalists to be invited into LBJ’s inner circle. “You just keep giving me the music,” Johnson told him, “and I’ll provide the action.”

Among the most indelible words Dick wrote was the call to action on voting rights that Johnson issued to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, barely a week after the horrific violence against peaceful civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.: “ Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome .”

Dick was also the one who christened Johnson’s ambitious agenda “the Great Society.”

He plucked from his boxes the first draft of that May 22, 1964, address that LBJ delivered at the University of Michigan. Eight typewritten pages revealed a work in progress: notes penciled in the margins, phrases underlined for emphasis, entire paragraphs scratched out. With it was a memo from special assistant Jack Valenti suggesting the speech was too long and needed more applause lines, as well as a terse note from top aide Bill Moyers telling Dick they should just “end all the debate” that Johnson’s aides had been having about the speech and go with a more conventional version.

But, Dick recalled, Johnson “knew his ambitions. ... When I first drafted that speech, somebody else on the staff took it upon himself to redo it, so it became just another anti-poverty speech. ... I went in to see Johnson. This was intended to be much more than anti-poverty. It was a grand master plan. Johnson had it changed back to what it had been.”

So the words that Dick wrote survived: “The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. ... But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

All of this had begun to come together in April 1964, just months after the assassination of Kennedy. Dick and Moyers were summoned to the White House swimming pool, where they were startled to find the new leader of the free world — naked — doing a leisurely side stroke. Johnson told them to strip off their own clothes and join him. “Come on in, boys,” he said. “It’ll do you good.”

Bobbing in the water, LBJ began speaking in expansive terms, as if to an unseen audience, about the things he intended to get accomplished. “I never thought I’d have the power,” he said. “I wanted power to use it. And I’m going to use it.”

The Great Society would be the most audacious test ever undertaken of what government was capable of doing. Nearly 200 major bills that LBJ prodded Congress to churn out in just under five years affected nearly every aspect of American life — knocking down racial barriers, tackling income inequality, providing universal health care to the elderly, giving the federal government a role in education, reforming what had been a Whites-only immigration system, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, even putting padded dashboards and seat belts in every automobile.

Dick’s role went beyond writing the speeches. He also helped put together the legislative program that made the Great Society a reality. Give me ideas, Johnson told his aides, and let me worry about the politics. “We were coming up with programs so fast, even Johnson could barely remember what he proposed,” Dick said. “And for a while there, Johnson was getting everything through.”

But sooner than Johnson and his team expected, the Great Society was subsumed by political backlash and the Vietnam War. Dick also realized there had been a naiveté to their grand aspirations. “It isn’t easy to change things this way. But for a few years, we thought we had the power to do that. That power disappeared when the president’s moral leadership disappeared,” Dick told me. “Johnson was gonna do all of this stuff — yeah, I’m convinced he was. I know. I talked to him about it many times. But once he got bogged down in Southeast Asia, it was no longer possible.”

After two years of working for Johnson, Dick was burned out and so disturbed by what he saw of the embattled president in private that he had begun to question LBJ’s sanity. Under the pressure, Dick would later write, Johnson’s idiosyncrasies had escalated into “what I believed to have been paranoid behavior” and the president had become “a very dangerous man.”

Near the end of 1965, Dick piled his boxes full of paper into the back of his car (these were the days before the Presidential Records Act required they be turned over to the National Archives) and left the White House. He would become an outspoken critic of Johnson and go to work for the 1968 presidential campaign of antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy, and then for Dick’s close friend and LBJ’s nemesis, Robert F. Kennedy.

He was at RFK’s bedside in some of the final hours before the candidate succumbed to an assassin’s bullet, just as RFK’s brother had. At the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, while antiwar riots raged in Grant Park, McCarthy enlisted Dick to coordinate the drafting of a “peace plank” for the party platform, one that called for an unconditional cessation of bombing. It was overwhelmingly defeated.

Dick’s tenure in the Johnson White House did not overlap with Doris’s, which came near the end of LBJ’s presidency. The two of them would not meet until 1972, when she was teaching at Harvard University and he was there finishing a book project. They married a little more than three years later. Over the course of nearly five decades together, they often argued about the president for whom both had worked, with Doris making the case for LBJ’s greatness and Dick, for whom the Kennedys would remain his heroes, focusing on where Johnson had failed.

Meanwhile, the boxes into which Dick had dumped his White House files and his other memorabilia — there were 300 of those cartons — would sit unopened in their barn and basement, some of them nibbled on by mice.

“The reason he hadn’t opened them all of those years was because he knew how sadly it ended, in terms of Bobby’s death, Martin Luther King and the riots in the streets, and the violence on the campuses, and he just wanted to move ahead and not look back,” Doris told me.

It wasn’t until Dick had passed his 80th birthday that he told his wife: “It’s now or never! If I have any wisdom to dispense, I better start dispensing it now.”

They would start from the beginning, with the letters and diaries he had written as a young man. The ones Dick wrote to his parents while he was in the army were a revelation to Doris. “I saw a Dick I didn’t know, because he says, I greet each day with a happy face,” she recalled. “I realized that he had originally a happy temperament, which he didn’t have through our lives. I mean, too much had happened to him. ... Except in those last years, when he got serenity.”

They never made it through all of the boxes. There were still more than 100 to go in early 2017, mostly ones that dealt with Dick’s work after he left public service to devote himself to writing. “Even from my brief look into these boxes, it was clear that they were anything but the papers of a placid spirit,” Doris wrote.

But by then, she could see he was slowing down, having trouble making it up the stairs and experiencing shortness of breath on their strolls through their backyard. Then came a diagnosis of cancer and the debilitating treatments that couldn’t hold it back.

As he slipped away, Dick took Doris’s hand and held it to his heart. “You’re a wonder,” he told her.

In her grief and loneliness, Doris, now 81, sold the house in Concord and moved to a high-rise apartment in Boston, taking enough with her that she could re-create the cozy nook where she had liked to work.

“Yet I felt the weight of the unfinished project that had given the last years of Dick’s life purpose and fulfillment,” she wrote in the book. “I found myself edging toward a commitment to finish the project, influenced by headlines announcing divisions between Black and white, old and young, rich and poor — divisions that made it increasingly evident that the momentous issues emanating from the Sixties remain the unresolved stuff of our everyday lives. Dick thought of his boxes as a time capsule of the decade, containing messages from the past to be delivered at some appropriate time in the future.”

“Perhaps, I began to think, that future is now.”

French Eurovision entry Slimane cuts rehearsal performance short to give unexpected speech about “peace”

"We must be United by Music, yes, but with love and peace"

French Eurovision entry Slimane has interrupted his own rehearsal performance to give an unexpected speech about “peace”.

• READ MORE: Inside the raging debate to watch Eurovision 2024: “This feels bigger than the contest”

During rehearsals today, Slimane made a surprising change to his song ‘Mon Amour’, where he replaced his a capella section with a speech about “peace”.

Footage of the performance shows the French-Algerian singer saying: “When I was a child, I dreamed of music. I dreamed about this dream – to be a singer, to sing about peace. We must be United by Music, yes, but with love and peace. Everyone wants to sing their song but they want to be united by love and peace.”

Eurovision has rules in place forbidding political statements or lyrics; it is unclear whether there will be penalties given for Slimane’s speech.

The message may be alluding to the controversial inclusion of Israel in this year’s competition, who have faced several calls to be excluded amongst their role in the Israel-Palestine conflict . Eurovision organisers the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have doubled down on this decision saying: “There are competition rules and you need to follow the competition rules and take decisions based on these competition rules. If you were to exclude Kan outside of these competition rules, that would have been a political decision, as such, which we cannot take.”

Slimane just said a speech and refused to do his acapella part during the family show. About peace. pic.twitter.com/HyXMH24tYq — GJ Kooijman (@gjkooijman) May 11, 2024

It also follows the whirlwind news that Dutch entry Joost Klein has been disqualified from the contest on the grounds of allegedly verbally threatening a female member of production crew. Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS called the decision “disproportionate”, adding they were “very disappointed” .

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They also claimed the “incident” surrounded Klein who was “filmed when he had just gotten off stage and had to rush to the greenroom. At that moment, Joost repeatedly indicated that he did not want to be filmed. This wasn’t respected. This led to a threatening movement from Joost towards the camera. Joost did not touch the camera woman.”

AVROTROS added: “We stand for good manners – let there be no misunderstanding about that – but in our view, an exclusion order is not proportional to this incident.”

Meanwhile, Irish entry Bambie Thug has reportedly raised a complaint with the EBU due to Israeli broadcaster KAN’s commentary about their performance .

The comments, which told viewers to “prepare your curses” and claim Bambie’s performance was “the most scary” of the night, were labelled “in breach of the rules” of the EBU.

Bambie added: “I hope the EBU will address it correctly.”

In other news, Bambie has called on Eurovision organisers to “show some humanity” over the political issues impacting the contest .

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2 Minute Speech On World Peace In English

Good morning to everyone in this room. I would like to thank the principal, the teachers, and my dear friends for allowing me to speak to you today about world peace. World peace involves nonviolent solidarity among nations. Peace is defined as the presence of law and justice in a nation in addition to the absence of conflict. When nations resolve their disputes amicably and cooperate to raise the standard of living for their citizens, there is world peace.

No corner of the planet is secure from modern destructive weaponry, and if all nations do not resolve their disputes and live in peace, then all the lethal weapons that each nation possesses will destroy our entire civilization. Because of the immense damage that the last two wars inflicted, mankind still shudders at the notion of experiencing that trauma again. 

This world has so many issues that it is difficult for one nation to address them all, but if all nations work together in harmony and peace, we can stop the devastation of our planet. People feel free to go to any nation without fear of terrorism when there is world peace, which encourages tourism and boosts economic growth.

Abolishing violence and the use of weapons, distributing resources equally, improving the education system, allowing people to vote, advancing globalization and economic linkages, and raising knowledge of the advantages of world peace are only a few of the effective steps that should be taken to stop the devastation and promote peace on Earth. Thank you. 

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Full text of Xi's speech at the closing ceremony of the Sixth Meeting of the China-France Business Council

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the closing ceremony of the Sixth Meeting of the China-France Business Council together with French President Emmanuel Macron and delivers a speech titled "Building on Past Achievements to Jointly Usher in a New Era in China-France Cooperation" in Paris, France, May 6, 2024. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

PARIS, May 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday delivered a speech here at the closing ceremony of the Sixth Meeting of the China-France Business Council.

The following is the full text of the speech:

Building on Past Achievements to Jointly Usher in a New Era

In China-France Cooperation

Remarks by H.E. Xi Jinping

President of the People's Republic of China

At the Closing Ceremony of The Sixth Meeting of the China-France Business Council

Paris, May 6, 2024

Your Excellency President Emmanuel Macron,

Representatives of the Chinese and French Business Communities,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to attend the China-France Business Council meeting with President Macron again in a little over a year and to meet friends, old and new, of the business communities of the two countries. It has been five years since I last visited Paris. I wish to start by extending my warm greetings to you all. I wish the Council's sixth meeting a full success.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of China-France diplomatic relations. Sixty years complete one cycle in the traditional Chinese calendar, bridging the past and the future.

For 60 years, China and France have remained devoted friends of each other. We both have always committed to the principles of independence, mutual understanding, strategic vision, and win-win cooperation which underpinned the establishment of our diplomatic relations. Together, we have traversed an extraordinary journey, and forged a close and lasting comprehensive strategic partnership. The China-France relationship has always been a pacesetter for the relations between China and Western countries. It shows how countries with different cultures, systems and development levels can help each other succeed and make progress together. China-France friendship is in the best interest of the Chinese and French peoples as well as the interest of the whole world.

For 60 years, China and France have remained win-win partners of each other. Bilateral trade and investment have grown tremendously from negligible levels. Our trade has expanded by nearly 800 times since the establishment of diplomatic relations, reaching 78.9 billion U.S. dollars. Cumulative two-way investment has exceeded 26 billion U.S. dollars. More than 2,000 French companies have woven themselves into the fabric of the Chinese market. China is the largest trading partner of France outside the EU, and France is a major EU trading partner of China. Flagship projects such as the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant and Airbus A320 Family assembly facilities in Tianjin stand as vivid examples of our mutually beneficial cooperation. Our two countries are also engaged in enthusiastic discussions on expanding cooperation in emerging fields such as green and low-carbon development, digital economy and cross-border e-commerce. Thanks to 60 years of growth, our economies are now closely intertwined and highly symbiotic.

Both China and France are parts of the Eurasian continent, located at its east and west ends respectively. China is a typical Eastern civilization, and France showcases the Western. Our two countries do not have geopolitical conflicts, and we do not have clashes of fundamental interests. What we do have in common is we both think independently, both are fascinated by our splendid cultures, and we are engaged in result-oriented cooperation based on many shared interests. Our experiences in the past and at present both show that there is no reason for failures in bringing out the best in China-France relations. We have now reached a new crossroads in the development of mankind and face global changes unseen in a century. Against this backdrop, China is ready to enhance all-round exchanges and cooperation with France, bring the China-France relationship to a new stage and make it even more productive.

-- Looking to the future, we will work with France to enrich the economic and trade dimensions of the China-France comprehensive strategic partnership. As one of the earliest participants in China's reform and opening up, France has contributed to China's modernization drive and benefited from it. Deeper friendship calls for frequent exchanges and closer cooperation. We always view France as a priority and trustworthy partner of cooperation. We are committed to expanding our business relations in both width and depth by opening up new areas, creating new models and fostering new growth areas. China will continue to make full use of the "French farm to Chinese dining table" whole-chain rapid coordination mechanism, and bring more cheese, ham, wine and other quality agricultural products from France to the dining tables of Chinese families. China has decided to extend visa exemption entry for citizens from 12 countries including France on short-term visits to China until the end of 2025, a step that will further boost people-to-people exchanges.

-- Looking to the future, we will work with France to deepen China-Europe mutually beneficial cooperation. China and Europe are two major forces in building a multipolar world, two big markets that promote globalization, and two great civilizations that advocate cultural diversity. China-Europe relations are crucial for peace, stability and prosperity of the world. The two sides should always define China-Europe relations as a comprehensive strategic partnership, continue to enhance political mutual trust, remove various distractions, and jointly oppose attempts to turn business relations into political, ideological or security issues. We hope that Europe will work together with us to increase understanding through dialogue, resolve differences through cooperation, and defuse risks with enhanced mutual trust. We should turn China and Europe into each other's key partners for business cooperation, priority partners for cooperation in science and technology, and trustworthy partners for cooperation in industrial and supply chains. China will, on its own initiative, further open up the service sector including telecommunication and medical services, and open its market wider to create more opportunities for companies of France, Europe and beyond.

-- Looking to the future, we are ready to join hands with France to tackle global challenges. The world today is facing growing peace deficit, development deficit, security deficit and governance deficit. Both China and France are independent major countries and permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. This means our two countries need to shoulder our responsibilities and missions to enhance stability in China-France relations to address uncertainties of the world. We need to step up coordination in the U.N. and provide more leadership and support for global governance so as to build an equal and orderly multipolar world. China and France need to practice true multilateralism, further promote all-round WTO reform, uphold the authority and performance of the multilateral trading regime with the WTO at its core, keep the global economy open, and promote a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. China and France need to urge the international community to pool strengths, stand by the goals and principles of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, actively address climate change, advance the global process of biological diversity protection, and jointly protect the Earth, our common home.

Reform and opening up, a truly remarkable endeavor, is the defining feature of China today. China is pursuing high-standard opening up to advance in-depth reform and high-quality development. We are upgrading traditional industries, fostering emerging industries, laying the groundwork for future industries, and moving faster to promote new quality productive forces. We are considering and taking major steps to further deepen reform across the board, steadily expand institutional opening up, further expand market access, and shorten the negative list for foreign investment. All this will create an even bigger market and present more opportunities for win-win cooperation for France and other countries. We welcome French entrepreneurs present toady to play an active part in the Chinese modernization process and benefit from China's development opportunities.

In more than two months, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will open by the beautiful Seine River. The Olympic Games is a symbol of solidarity, friendship and mutual learning between civilizations. Let us stay committed to the goal set by our two countries when our diplomatic ties were forged, boost our traditional friendship, and practice the Olympic motto of "Faster, Higher, Stronger-Together." Let us join hands to open up a new era of China-France cooperation and write a new chapter in building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Thank you. 

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French Singer Halts Eurovision 2024 Rehearsal Performance to Deliver Peace Statement

Alessandra Mele withdraws from delivering Norway's points with a statement of her own.

By Fred Bronson

Fred Bronson

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With less than four hours to go before the live grand final of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest, developments on the ground in Malmö, Sweden, are heating up at a fast pace.

Netherlands’ Joost Klein Disqualified From Eurovision After ‘Incident’

During the third dress rehearsal for the grand final, still in progress at Malmö Arena, the singer from France stopped his performance to deliver a statement. Slimane unexpectedly halted the song and called for peace and unity.

Trending on Billboard

Also this afternoon, Alessandra Mele, who performed for Norway in the 2023 competition and who was scheduled to be the spokesperson for her country delivering their jury’s points, has withdrawn from that assignment.

She released the following statement on Instagram : “Tonight I was supposed to give out Norway’s points during the Eurovision final. Even though I’m thankful I was given the opportunity to do so, I’ve taken the decision to withdraw. United By Music — Eurovision’s motto — is the reason I do music. Unite people, bring them together. But right now those words are just empty words. There is a genocide going on and I’m asking you all to please open up your eyes, open up your heart. Let love lead you to the truth. It’s right in front of you. Free Palestine.”

Journalist Ingvild Helljesen will deliver Norway’s points during the live show. As of press time, demonstrators on the streets of Malmö can be heard protesting Israel’s participation.

This is a developing story.

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Ukraine war latest: Russia claims it has seized more villages - as Ukraine faces 'extremely dangerous' moment

Fighting is ongoing in Kharkiv, Ukraine's governor for the region has said - as Russia claims it has taken control of multiple villages in its surprise offensive. Lord Cameron has warned it is an "extremely dangerous" moment in the war.

Sunday 12 May 2024 14:30, UK

• More than 4,000 civilians have fled Kharkiv region after Friday morning's surprise attack by Putin's military  
• Russia claims to have captured another four villages in Kharkiv - bringing total to nine
• Cameron says new Russian offensive marks 'extremely dangerous' moment for Ukraine  
• At least seven killed after apartment collapse in Belgorod - Russian media
• Eyewitness: Deborah Haynes reports from town 'flattened' in offensive
• Analysis:  Russia's attack in Kharkiv region not a complete surprise - but the force of it is
• Live reporting by Jake Levison

We've now got footage showing the moment a 10-storey apartment block collapsed in Belgorod.

At least seven people have been killed and 17 more injured after the building was struck by a shot-down missile, Russian media says.

Russian officials say the missile was part of an aerial attack by Ukraine. The claims have not been verified.

Footage also shows emergency services continuing to search the rubble for survivors.

We're seeing photos for the first time of Ukrainian soldiers on the front line against Russia's offensive in Kharkiv.

Their military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi earlier insisted Ukrainian forces were doing all they could to contain the Russian threat, but admitted it was proving a challenge.

You can see the impact of that challenge in the images below, two of which show Ukrainian military paramedics treating a wounded service member.

They're near the town of Vovchansk, which has seen some of the most brutal fighting since the Russian attack began on Friday.

 Some more details now from the ongoing search of a collapsed apartment block in the Russian city of Belgorod.

At least seven are dead and 17 injured after the 10-storey block fell, according to Russian media.

Russian officials say the building was struck by a Soviet-era missile launched by Ukraine that was shot down by Russia.

Specifically, they claimed it was a "massive mile attack" with Tochka ballistic missiles and Adler and RM-70 Vampire (MLRS) multiple launch rocket systems.

They said the attack, which involved at least 12 missiles, took place at 8.40am GMT.

Later, as emergency services scoured the rubble for survivors, the roof of the block collapsed and people ran for their lives, Reuters reported, with dust and rubble falling behind them.

Russian claims of a Ukrainian attack have not been verified and Kyiv officials have not commented.

Ukrainian officials never acknowledge responsibility for attacks on Russian territory or the Crimean Peninsula.

You may have noticed the bulk of our reporting over the past two days has covered two regions: Kharkiv in Ukraine and Belgorod in Russia.

A lot has happened in both, but here's a summary of events: 

In Kharkiv:  Russian forces have launched a brutal offensive, leading to fighting in various villages along the northeastern border separating Ukraine and Russia. 

Russia's defence ministry claims its troops have seized nine villages. Ukrainian officials, who have not commented on these claims, say thousands of civilians have been evacuated from the region.

In Belgorod:   Russian media has reported at least seven people have died and 15 more are injured after a whole section of the 10-storey building fell.

The governor of Russia's Belgorod region said the incident is a consequence of continuous attacks by Ukraine over the weekend - though Ukraine has not commented on the unverified claims.

Cities on opposite sides of the border

On the surface, these are completely separate incidents happening right next to each other.

And while Ukraine hasn't commented on whether it's responsible for the latest incident in Belgorod, it's no secret the city has regularly been targeted by Ukrainian artillery, drones and proxies over the past year.

Belgorod is a logistics hub for Russian military activity and Kyiv has always denied targeting civilians. 

Military analysts have speculated these attacks in Belgorod could have led Russia to carry out its brutal offensive in Kharkiv.

President Putin has long promised to create a buffer zone to push Ukrainian forces out of artillery range, which would limit the attacks on this frontier town. 

It's a likely motive, our military analyst  Sean Bell  has said, as is stretching Ukraine's military and potentially looking to seize the whole of Kharkiv.

We're seeing images from the Russian city of Belgorod, where part of a multi-storey apartment building has collapsed.

Russian media has reported at least seven people have died and 15 more are injured after a whole section of the 10-storey building fell.

Local officials have blamed the incident on "massive shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine" - but these claims have not been verified and Ukrainian officials have not commented.

Just before Russia claimed its troops had seized another four villages in Kharkiv, Ukraine's military chief had given an update on Telegram.

Oleksandr Syrskyi insisted his forces were doing all they could to contain the Russian threat, but admitted it was proving a challenge.

"Units of the Defence Forces are fighting fierce defensive battles, the attempts of the Russian invaders to break through our defences have been stopped," he said.

"The situation is difficult, but the Defence Forces of Ukraine are doing everything to hold defensive lines and positions, inflict damage on the enemy."

Ukrainian officials have not commented on reports from Russia claiming it has captured the villages of Hatyshche, Krasne, Morokhovets and Oliinykove.

The Russian defence ministry claims troops have seized four more villages in the Kharkiv region - which would bring the total to nine.

The ministry yesterday declared they had taken the Ukrainian villages of Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Strilecha, all of which are directly on the border with Russia's Belgorod region.

Russian officials said they had also captured another village, Pletenivka.

Now they've claimed four more: Hatyshche, Krasne, Morokhovets and Oliinykove.

Kyiv has not commented on the latest claims, but Ukrainian officials have remained adamant up until now that the country's troops are continuing to fight and prevent Russians from claiming more ground.

At least seven people have died after the partial collapse of an apartment building in the Russian city of Belgorod, Russia's Mash Telegram news channel has reported.

The revised number is up from earlier reports, which said three people had died.

Mash reported at least another 15 people had been injured.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor, blamed the incident on "massive shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine".

The claims have not been independently verified and there has been no comment from Ukrainian officials.

A witness at the scene told Reuters news agency there were many ambulances and fire engines at the site.

"A whole section of a 10-storey building collapsed," the witness told Reuters on condition of anonymity. 

"I see several victims. Firefighters are sorting through the rubble."

Our defence editor  Deborah Haynes  says there are real fears the key city of Kharkiv could come under threat of a Russian takeover.

As it stands, fighting is ongoing near the northeastern border of the Kharkiv region.

The Russian defence ministry has already claimed its troops have taken five border villages and Ukrainian officials have said they are trying to claim more ground.

Ukraine officials and military analysts have been adamant Russia would struggle to seize Kharkiv - Ukraine's second largest city - having already failed to do so earlier in the war.

But Haynes says Russia's "ferocious assault" that started on Friday will stretch Ukraine's "already outgunned and undermanned" forces.

"There are real fears that if Ukraine is not able to repel this offensive... Russia could once again threaten this key city of Kharkiv," she says.

By  Deborah Haynes , security and defence editor

Russia has reopened a major front in its war with Ukraine in a move that will stretch Kyiv's already undermanned and outgunned forces as they wait for Western weapons.

The Russian military unleashed a ferocious barrage of artillery and airstrikes in the early hours of Friday morning as ground troops attempted the most significant incursion into northeastern Ukraine - territory that shares a long border with Russia - in two years.

Fierce fighting raged into the weekend in different locations along a 45-mile strip of the frontier in the Kharkiv region.

Moscow claimed to have seized five villages, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said battles were taking place around seven villages.

In a sign of the seriousness of the challenge, Ukraine is deploying reserve forces to help repel the Russian assault and a senior commander has been appointed to lead the effort.

The timing of the attack could not be worse for Kyiv - which presumably is why Russia decided to act.

Read more here ...

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