If you need a little creative inspiration then look no further than Speeches That Changed the World. Great speeches can misinform and mislead as much as inspire and it is therefore fitting that this anthology includes examples of the Machiavellian and Orwellian alongside the saintly. Adolf Hitler’s speech, demanding the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938, is chilling in its contemptuousness. Similarly, one reels at the audacity of Napoleon’s declaration: “I have sacrificed all of my interests to those of the country.”
Inevitably, some of the speeches take on a different nuance with the benefit of historical hindsight, such as President Mikhail Gorbachev’s United Nations address in 1988, when he declared “freedom of choice is a universal principle.” Martin Luther King delivered some of the greatest civil rights speeches of all time – his last is all the more poignant given that it was made on the eve of his assassination. His sincerity is in striking contrast to Richard Nixon’s television address, when news of the Watergate scandal first broke, and he assured the nation that “justice will be pursued fairly, fully and impartially no matter who is involved”.
Each speech is put in context and accompanied by a biography. So we get insights into how past presidents have worked with their speech writers. Ronald Reagan, for example, could fall back on his acting skills and his speech writer, Peggy Noonan, crafted his speeches to suit his “unpretentious style.”This new edition now includes Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations; Barack Obama’s celebratory post-presidential speech; Earl Spencer’s tribute to his sister, “the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana”; and Nikita Khrushchev’s astonishing denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Communist Party congress in 1956.
The most rousing of all is Nobel peace prize winner Elie Wiesel’s millennium speech on “the perils of indifference”. Politicians would do well to study this rallying call to remember our moral responsibility to fight against injustice. Wiesel looks back on the 20th century’s worst catastrophes and memorably concludes: “Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred… indifference is never creative…indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response, indifference is not a beginning; it is an end.” This is a fascinating collection of more than 50 historic speeches that serves to entertain and enlighten in equal measure.
Speeches That Changed the World with an introduction by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Quercus, £20
