Richard Beeman, the John Welsh Centennial Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, has previously served as the Chair of the Department of History, Associate Dean in Penn's School of Arts and Sciences, and Dean of the College of Arts of Sciences. He serves as a trustee of the National Constitution Center and on the center's executive committee. Author of seven previous books, among them The Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution and Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, Professor Beeman has received numerous grants and awards including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Huntington Library. His biography of Patrick Henry was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Theodore Roosevelt ‘The doctine of the strenuous life’ (1899)
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman ‘Methods of barbarism’ (1901)
Keir Hardie ‘Socialism’ (1901)
Joseph Chamberlain ‘I believe in a British Empire and I do not believe in a Little England’ (1903)
F.E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead) ‘I warn the Government’ (1906)
Theodore Roosevelt ‘The men with the muck-rakes’ (1906)
Emmeline Pankhurst ‘The plight of women’ (1908)
David Lloyd George ‘The People's Budget’ (1909)
David Lloyd George ‘We are in for rough weather’ (1909)
Theodore Roosevelt ‘The new nationalism’ (1910)
Emmeline Pankhurst ‘Freedom or death’ (1913)
Edward Carson ‘Ulster is asking to be let alone’ (1914)
David Lloyd George ‘The great pinnacle of sacrifice’ (1914)
Patrick Pearse ‘Ireland unfree shall never be at peace’ (1915)
Mahatma Gandhi ‘There is no salvalion for India’ (1916)
Proclamation of the Irish Republic ‘Ireland summons her children to the Flag’ (1916)
Roger Casement ‘In Ireland alone, in this twentieth century, is loyalty held to be a crime’ (1916)
Woodrow Wilson ‘The world must be made safe for democracy’ (1917)
V.I. Lenin ‘A new phase in the history of Russia begins’ (1917)
Leon Trotsky ‘The dustbin of history’ (1917)
Leon Trotsky ‘We need an army’ (1918)
Eugene V. Debs ‘While there is a lower class, I am in it’ (1918)
David Lloyd George ‘A fit country for heroes to live in’ (1918)
Henry Cabot Lodge ‘American I was born’ (1919)
Woodrow Wilson ‘Man will see the truth’ (1919)
Alfred E. Smith ‘A man as low and mean as I can picture’ (1919)
George V ‘The eyes of the whole Empire are on Ireland today’ (1921)
Mahatina Gandhi ‘Non-violence is the first article of my faith’ (1922)
A.J. Balfour ‘A messge to every land where the Jewish race is scattered’ (1922)
Stanley Baldwin ‘The sounds of England’ (1924)
ClarenceDarrow ‘The life of the Negro race has been a life of tragedy’ (1926)
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti ‘I am never be guilty, never’ (1927)
Herbert Hoover ‘Rugged Individualism’ (1928)
Oswald Mosley ‘The nation has to be mobilized’ (1930)
Ramsay MacDonald ‘We are not on trial’ (1930)
Joseph Stalin ‘Either we do it–or they crush us’ (1931)
Philip Snowden ‘Bolshevism run mad’ (1931)
Adolf Hitter ‘An indomitable aggressive spirit’ (1932)
Stanley Baldwin ‘The bomber will always get through’ (1932)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ (1933)
Adolf Hitler ‘The supreme justiciar of the German people’ (1934)
Oswald Mosley ‘England again dares to be great’ (1935)
La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibarruri) ‘They shall not pass’ (1936)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‘The forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match’ (1936)
Winston Churchill ‘The locust years’ (1936)
Stanley Baldwin ‘I shall always trust the instincts of our democratic people’ (1936)
Chaim Weizmann ‘The Jews carry Palestine in their hearts’ (1936)
Edward VIII ‘I have determined to renounce the Thone’ (1936)
Stanley Baldwin ‘The House today is a theatre which is being watched by the whole world’ (1936)
Edward VIII ‘God Save the King’ (1936)
Leon Trotsky ‘I stake my life’ (1937)
Adolf Hitler ‘My patience is now at an end’ (1938)
Martin Niemoller ‘The oppression is growing’ (1937)
Neville Chamberlain ‘Peace for our time’ (1938)
Duff Cooper ‘My head erect’ (1938)
Winston Churchill ‘A total and unmitigated defeat’ (1938)
Neville Chamberlain ‘Is this an attempt to dominate the world by force?’ (1939)
Neville Chamberlain ‘This country is at war with Germany’ (1939)
Leo Amery ‘In the name of God, go’ (1940)
David Lloyd George ‘Sacrifice the seals of office’ (1940)
Winston Churchill ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’ (1940)
Winston Churchill ‘Be ye men of valour’ (1940)
Winston Churchill ‘This was their finest hour’ (1940)
Charles de Gaulle ‘The flame of French resistance’ (1940)
J.B. Priestley ‘This little steamer’ (1940)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‘The arsenal of democray’ (1940)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‘The four freedoms’ (1941)
Joseph Stalin ‘A grave danger hangs over our country’ (1941)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‘A date which will live in infamy’ (1941)
Reinhard Heydrich ‘The final solution’ (1942)
General Bernard Montgomery ‘We will stand and fight here’ (1942)
Chaim Rumkowski ‘Give me your children’ (1942)
Eamon de Valera ‘The vision of such an Ireland’ (1943)
General George Patton ‘That son of a bitch Patton again’ (1943–4)
Bishop George Bell ‘Obliteration is not a justifiable act of war’ (1944)
J. Robert Oppenheimer ‘Our deep moral dependence’ (1945)
Winston Churchill The ‘iron curtain’ (1946)
Bernard Baruch ‘A choice between the quick and the dead’ (1946)
Jawaharlal Nehru ‘The noble mansion of free India’ (1947)
Jawaharlal Nehru ‘The light has gone out of our lives’ (1948)
Joseph McCarthy ‘I have in my hand . . .’ (1950)
William Faulkner ‘The agony and the sweat’ (1950)
Aneurin Bevan ‘There is only one hope for mankind’ (1951)
Adlai Stevenson ‘Let's talk sense to the American people’ (1952)
Kwame Nkrumah ‘The motion of destiny’ (1953)
Fidel Castro ‘History will absolve me’ (1953)
Bertrand Russell ‘Shall we choose death?’ (1954)
Martin Luther King ‘There comes a time when people get tired’ (1955)
Nikita Khrushchev ‘We must abolish the cult of the individual’ (1956)
Aneurin Bevan ‘We have to act up to different standards’ (1956)
Aneurin Bevan ‘Naked into the conference chamber’ (1957)
Enoch Powell ‘Hola Camp’ (1959)
Aneurin Bevan ‘An ugly society, a vulgar society, a meretricious society’ (1959)
Harold Macmillian ‘The wind of change’ (1960)
Eugene McCarthy ‘Do not reject this man’ (1960)
John F. Kennedy ‘A new frontier’ (1960)
John F. Kennedy ‘The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans’ (1961)
Gideon Hausner ‘That man was Eichmann’ (1961)
Hugh Gaitskell ‘We will fight, fight and fight again’ (1961)
Iain Macleod ‘The brotherhood of man’ (1961)
Douglas MacArthur ‘Duty –– Honor –– Country’ (1962)
Hugh Gaitskell ‘'The end of a thousand years of history’ (1962)
John F. Kennedy ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (1963)
Nigel Birch ‘Never glad confident morning again’ (1963)
Martin Luther King ‘I have a dream’ (1963)
Harold Wilson ‘The white heat of technology’ (1963)
Lyndon B. Johnson ‘Let us continue’ (1963)
Nelson Mandela ‘An ideal for which I am prepared to die’ (1964)
Lyndon B. Johnson ‘The Great Society’ (1964)
Barry Goldwater ‘Extremism in defence of liberty is not vice’ (1964)
Ronald Reagan ‘A time for choosing’ (1964)
Malcolm X ‘More African than American’ (1965)
Lyndon B. Johnson ‘We shall over come’ (1965)
Roy Jenkins ‘This is the Goal’ (1966)
Robert Kennedy ‘A tiny ripple of hope’ (1966)
Eugene McCarthy ‘The decent opinion of mankind’ (1967)
Melina Mercouri ‘We will be free’ (1968)
Lyndon B. Johnson ‘I shall not seek nor will I accept nomination as your president’ (1968)
Enoch Powell ‘I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”’ (1968)
Richard Nixon ‘The time has come for an honest government’ (1968)
Betty Friedan ‘A woman's civil right’ (1969)
Edward Heath ‘Millions will rejoice’ (1971)
Richard Nixon ‘Au revoir’ (1974)
Sir Keith Joseph ‘Our human stock is threatened’ (1974)
Margaret Thatcher ‘Let me give you my vision’ (1975)
Chaim Herzog ‘Hate, ignorance and evil’ (1975)
Michael Foot ‘The red flame of Socialist courage’ (1976)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn ‘What is the joy about?’ (1978)
Roy Jenkins ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’ (1979)
Edward Kennedy ‘The dream shall never die’ (1980)
Michael Heseltine ‘We are reaping the whirlwind of all our yesterdays’ (1981)
Margaret Thatcher ‘The Falklands Factor’ (1982)
Robert Runcie ‘Our neighbours are indeed like us’ (1982)
Neil Kinnock ‘I warn you’ (1983)
Pope John Paul II ‘We do not want a Poland which costs us nothing’ (1983)
Denis Healey ‘The great she-elephant, she who must be obeyed’ (1984)
Prince Charles ‘A monstrous carbuncle’ (1984)
Ronald Reagan ‘Let us make a vow to the dead’ (1984)
Neil Kinnock ‘You can't play politics with peoples jobs’ (1985)
Ronald Reagan ‘The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted’ (1986)
Neil Kinnock ‘Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?’ (1987)
Edward Kennedy ‘Now is the time’ (1988)
Jesse Jackson ‘Keep hope alive’ (1988)
Margaret Thatcher ‘The frontiers of the State’ (1988)
Vaclav Havel ‘A contaminated moral environment’ (1990)
Nelson Mandela ‘Our march to freedom is irreversible’ (1990)
Sir Geoffrey Howe ‘A conflict of loyalty’ (1990)
Tony Benn ‘I cannot hand away powers lent to me’ (1991)
Salman Rushdie ‘What is my single life worth?’ (1991)
Queen Elizabeth II ‘Annus Horribilis’ (1992)
Bill Clinton ‘If Martin Luther King were to reappear’ (1993)
Nelson Mandela ‘Let freedom reign’ (1994)
Tony Blair ‘A modern constitution’ (1994)
Elie Wiesel ‘Listen to the silent screams’ (1995)
Earl Spencer ‘The most hunted person of the modern age’ (1997)
Tony Blair ‘A beacon to the world’ (1997)
Michael Portillo ‘The causes of defeat’ (1997)
Boris Yeltsin ‘May they rest in peace’ (1998)
Bill Clinton ‘This has hurt too many innocent people’ (1998)